I call them Dragons. We all have them, just slightly different ones. Sometimes they seem to be sleeping quietly. At other times it’s as if they are sitting on our heads. Shouting. Really loudly.

By Dragons, I mean those critical voices in our heads that run through our lives like a pulled thread. And they commentate on our day-to-day activities. Sometimes they sound a bit like us. Sometimes they sound a bit like someone we know or used to know.

The Not Good Enough Dragon. The Big Fat Failure Dragon. The Book of Shoulds Dragon. The Good Girl Dragon. The Too Old or Too Young Dragon. The Dragon of Perfection and her friend The Dragon of Do More. Just to name a few. Or my personal favourite The You Used To Be Better Dragon. (Mine wears a glamorous hat and Louboutin shoes lol….)

I’m not trying to get you to murder your Dragons. Or outshout them. Both of those tactics seem to take a lot of energy with patchy success in my experience. I’m not going to ask you to unpick where and when and why the Dragon was born because that’s a job for a therapist not a coach if you want to explore it.

My contribution is to help you See and Name Them as a first step when they get in your way or distract you from doing what you really want to do. And it’s easier as a coach to see the metaphorical rustling leaves that suggest a Dragon because it’s not my Dragon. It’s not a familiar voice to me as it is for you.

And then? We’ll work out together when the Dragons help and when they don’t and what to do when you need them in the back seat rather than the driving seat…..

I’ll share some thoughts another day about when you might want to make them Tea and Cake…..