Dec. 17, 2025
Stop Being Your Own Worst Enemy Part 2: Words Have Power
Ever notice how your inner voice can quietly sabotage your confidence, your mood, and even your motivation—without you fully realizing it? Imagine understanding exactly how that happens, and learning how to interrupt it before it derails your day.
In this second episode of How to Stop Being Your Own Worst Enemy, I take you deeper into the real work of mindset change. We move beyond why your brain gets negative and into what to do about it. This episode is all about awareness, language, and the stories you’re telling yourself on repeat—and how those stories shape everything that follows.
🎯 OMG Moment: It’s not the situation that creates how you feel—it’s the story you’re telling yourself about it. Change the story, and everything downstream can change.
Take Action
Once or twice a day, pause and ask yourself: What story am I telling myself right now?
Notice patterns without judgment. And if you want help with this, download the free Story Cycle resource at cherylpfischer.com/storycycle to start spotting where your self-talk might be working against you.
**Remember that you have personal email access to me as a subscriber. Send your questions or comments to bonus@cherylpfischer.com.**
Why This Episode Matters
Midlife is full of transitions, challenges, and new chapters—and the way you talk to yourself determines whether those moments build confidence or chip away at it. This episode helps you shift from self-criticism to self-awareness, which is the foundation for lasting confidence, calm, and forward momentum.
🌸 Liked this episode? Share it with fellow Gen X women navigating hormone balance, an empty nest, and/or self-confidence!
🫶 Love this show? Leave a review to help more women over 50 find us.
💡Want menopause advice, mindset shifts, or support with midlife transformation?
- Book a free Mindset Coaching / Intro Call: cherylpfischer.com/coaching
Let’s talk health after 50, self-talk, and redefining aging for women — without the “midlife crisis” narrative. Every week I'm adding new success strategies for midlife women.
Connect with Cheryl, Midlife Coach: Instagram | LinkedIn | Website
00:00 - Welcome Back And The Pitfall Of Overanalyzing
01:47 - Words Have Power: Internal Vs External
03:16 - The Story Cycle: Situation To Outcome
05:05 - Real-Life Examples: Pickleball To Parties
08:24 - Build Awareness And Spot Patterns
10:08 - Takeaway Practice And Next Steps
WEBVTT
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Hello there.
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Welcome to the second part of how to stop being your own worst enemy.
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Now, in last time session, and if you haven't listened to it, go find it in Apple or wherever you've set up your private podcast and listen into that first because we talked about the traps that we can fall into.
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What why do we even get stuck in this place of being our own worst enemy?
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Why is that happening?
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So we answered that question in part one, and now we don't want to just sit there.
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And one of the problems I had when I first started learning this was I sort of got stuck sitting there and trying to figure out all the things I had done wrong and why I had I done those things wrong and what had happened to me in the past that made me think that way.
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And while some of that is healthy, and maybe if you've had some trauma or you have some real issues that you need to work through, you might work with a therapist and do that.
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But there's a point where we don't want to just get stuck in the backwards, in the why, if that makes sense.
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There's a point where we can say, okay, I know all these reasons why my brain might go a little negative and might be a little self-critical.
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I accept that.
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Now let me see what I can do.
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Let's move forward.
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And one of my coaches a while back said to me, and it always stuck with me, that this is the work.
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It's not as if we finish a course about self-talk, and automatically, forever and ever, we got an A plus in the course, and our self-talk is now going to be perfect.
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No, this is the work.
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We're always making little adjustments.
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We're always making little adjustments, and it gets easier.
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That's the good part.
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Okay, so what I want to say today is that words have power.
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And so all of those traps we talked about so far hinge on words, either internal or external.
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So internal is your self-talk.
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It's the thoughts running around in your head that are always going to be there.
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That's your brain at work, it's not going to stop.
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That's how it works.
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And then external is conversation.
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It's how you're speaking to other people.
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In both cases, whether you're kind of speaking to yourself inside your brain or you're speaking to someone else, words have power.
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We are listening to ourselves.
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And so the words we're choosing, the way we're speaking, have power.
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And why am I even talking about words here?
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So in this particular series, we're gonna focus on the internal words, the self-talk.
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I think probably at some point I will do a separate series on external, meaning when we get into that habit of complaining all the time, what's that really doing?
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You can imagine not great things.
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But for now, let's focus on internal.
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So why am I focused on words?
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In every situation in life, every situation, without exception, we have a story in our minds that we tell ourselves, and sometimes we tell other people, there's always a story that we're telling ourselves.
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There are thoughts running through our head explaining this situation.
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And whatever that story is inside our heads creates an emotion, and that emotion influences the actions we take.
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And of course, you know this, the actions we take create an outcome.
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What is the result?
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Well, it all started back with the story that we were telling ourselves inside our heads.
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So I'm gonna talk us through this S S E A O cycle.
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Situation, story, emotion, action, outcome.
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Okay, so some examples.
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You want some examples.
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Let's go.
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Let's give you some examples.
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Let's say you're learning a new sport or a new activity.
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You have decided you're gonna try pickleball, let's say.
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And what's going to happen is the situation is you're trying pickleball.
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The story is all the thoughts you have about it.
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Maybe you're telling yourself you're gonna be great at this because you've always been good at sports.
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Maybe you're telling yourself the opposite of that, you're gonna be terrible at this because you haven't really ever played sports.
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You're you're telling yourself you're not a quick learner, you're telling yourself the people that you ended up having to play with are not very nice, so that's gonna make it not good.
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You're telling yourself it's a hot day, and on hot days we don't do well.
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There's all kinds of stuff going on in there, right?
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And whatever that stuff is going on in your head creates the way you feel about it.
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You might feel excited, you might feel nervous, you might feel a little bit trepidatious, you might feel frustrated.
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There's so many emotion words that we don't get to use that often.
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And that affects how you act, whether you come in and you really go for it and you have fun, or whether you come in and you sort of, without maybe even realizing it, look for the problems, look for the frustrations.
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It could be that you're hitting some challenges in your business or in your job.
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We could talk through a similar thing.
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You tell yourself that, gosh, it always seems like I hit this type of challenge because I'm not good at dealing with blah blah blah.
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That creates a certain emotion and that affects how you take action.
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This happens when we're trying a different eating plan or a different exercise plan, or you come home from an event or a get-together and you're feeling kind of low.
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Well, you're telling yourself a story about all those things.
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Let's say you went to a party.
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This actually happened to me, and it took me a while to figure it out.
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Let's say you went to a party and you had a nice time, you talked to a lot of people, and you came home and you were just kind of feeling blah, blah.
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When this happened to me, I did not know what to make of it.
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Maybe I was tired, right?
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Like it'd been a long day, I went to the party, maybe I was tired.
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Or maybe something that happened at that party, which really comes down to some story I told myself about that party, created this feeling.
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And so I just kind of sat with that and I wondered about it, and I didn't put any pressure on myself trying to figure it out, but I wondered about it, and I realized that there had been a few people at the party that I had talked to that had they hadn't made me feel great, and it wasn't really their fault.
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It was me telling myself that maybe I didn't fit in with them, and maybe I wasn't as cool as them or dressed as well, and so that made me feel like I don't know, it made me feel a little embarrassed, or I can't think of a good word to go with it, and and that was hanging on to me, and it was entirely from a story I was telling myself about the situation.
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So hopefully those examples help you to see what I mean.
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So we're saying there's a situation, we tell ourselves a story about it inside our heads, that creates an emotion that we're feeling about this situation, which of course then affects how we act.
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What action do we take or not take?
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And then, of course, that affects the outcome, the results.
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So the very first thing to focus on when trying not to be your own worst enemy is being aware of this.
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Awareness is key.
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Listen to your own thoughts.
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Pause every now and then during the day and take a little inventory.
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And this is what my story cycle resource is all about, which you might have heard me talk about on the podcast.
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It's free.
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Cherylpfisher.com slash story cycle.
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Listen to your own thoughts and just recognize: is there anything in there that I'm telling myself on a loop that might be not true or problematic or slanted in a way that's not helping me?
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Listen to your words in your conversations.
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Is there anything in there that's not true or slanted in a certain way that doesn't help me?
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Recognize when you feel defeated, feel nervous, feel embarrassed, and look for what was going on inside my head that created that.
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And look for patterns when this happens for you.
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Maybe it happens for you in certain situations, kind of all the time or regularly.
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What is that pattern?
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What's going on there?
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So that's your activity to take with you after this episode.
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I want you to think about noticing once or twice a day what's running around in my head.
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Just pause, maybe put a little note on your computer, pause.
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What's going around in my head?
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I also want you to notice the good part.
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What lights you up?
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What situation, person, scenario do you often feel great about?
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And what are you telling yourself then?
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And how do you feel around various people in your life?
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Because we're going to start digging into that as well.
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So give those things some thought.
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Pause and observe what's going on in your head.
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And I'll see you on the next episode.
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