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Summary
On episode 157 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan digs into your inner voice and asks a simple question: is it a nice person? He walks listeners through a short self-audit to figure out whether their internal dialogue is helping or sabotaging their health and fitness goals.
Allan draws on Carol Dweck’s Mindset to contrast a fixed mindset, which treats intelligence, personality, and fitness as capped and unchangeable, with a growth mindset, which sees effort as the path to real change. He argues most people would never speak to a friend the way they speak to themselves after a missed workout or a bad meal, and that gap is worth closing.
He offers two concrete tools: proof-based mantras that back up a positive statement with actual evidence (“I know I’ll be healthier tomorrow because I went for a walk today”), and a daily gratitude practice tied to the show’s October Gratitude Month Facebook group. Both are meant to build a track record you can point to on the days your inner voice turns negative.
Links
- https://40plusfitness.com
Key Takeaways
- Your inner voice drives whether you succeed or not. Allan calls it a powerful force that shapes mood, feelings, and ultimately outcomes, and argues that anyone serious about health and fitness needs that voice acting like an inner cheerleader rather than a critic. The tone of that internal dialogue is worth auditing on purpose rather than assuming it is fine.
- Run a self-audit by writing down the words your inner voice actually uses. Allan has listeners write out how they’d describe their current health and fitness, their 1, 3, and 10 year vision of themselves, and what their inner voice says after a slip like a missed workout or an off-plan meal. The exercise only works if you’re honest about the actual words, not the words you wish you used.
- Compare those words to how you’d talk to someone you love. Allan’s test is simple: would you use the same harsh language on a friend who missed a workout that you use on yourself? If the answer is no, that gap is evidence your inner voice needs work, not proof that you deserve the harsher version.
- A fixed mindset resists failure because failure threatens a self-image that feels permanent. Drawing on Carol Dweck’s research, Allan explains that people with a fixed mindset believe intelligence, personality, and ability are capped, so failure just proves the cap is lower than they’d like others to think. That fear of failure makes it harder to take the risks that produce growth.
- A growth mindset treats failure as information, not a verdict. People with a growth mindset believe they can improve their intelligence, personality, or fitness with effort, so a setback becomes a lesson about what not to do rather than a final judgment. Allan places himself somewhere in the middle: he believes in real limits, but also in a large amount of room for improvement within them.
- Changing your inner voice starts with believing you actually can. Allan says if you don’t believe your inner voice can change, you’re right, so belief and desire to change come before any technique. He recommends redoing the self-audit periodically since people can drift back toward old patterns without noticing.
- Use proof-based mantras instead of generic positive statements. Rather than simply repeating “I am strong,” Allan wants listeners to attach evidence to the claim, such as “I know I’ll be healthier tomorrow because I went for a walk today.” That evidence gives you something concrete to point back to on a bad day, so one slip doesn’t erase 15 good days of effort.
- A daily gratitude practice retrains your inner voice toward the positive. Allan points to the show’s October Gratitude Month Facebook group as a place to post something you’re grateful for every day, arguing that people naturally overemphasize the negative and underemphasize the positive. Reviewing your own recent gratitude posts on a bad day is a quick way to remember the good week you just had.
- When you slip, get back to action immediately instead of dwelling on it. Allan’s advice for a bad night or a missed week is simple: lay out your workout clothes, get up the next morning, and go for even a short 15 minute walk. The point isn’t to redo exactly what you missed, it’s to take one visible step in the right direction before the negative self-talk has time to compound.
“Is your inner voice a nice person?”
Coach Allan
