Eben Pagan teaches how to transform destructive self-criticism into encouraging inner dialogue that fuels business success. He reveals how negative self-talk sabotages entrepreneurs and provides specific techniques for developing loving, supportive internal communication.
Encourage Inside
Eben reveals that everyone has a constant inner dialogue running like a radio station, with most people unaware of its negative impact. This self-talk typically involves harsh criticism that sabotages success rather than supporting it.
Self-criticism comes from parents trying to protect through correction, but it focuses on what NOT to do rather than positive direction. In modern knowledge work environments, this approach actually hinders the innovation and risk-taking required for success.
The solution involves changing your internal voice tone to loving and encouraging while creating affirmations that start with 'I deserve' and 'I give myself permission to.' This proactive approach trains your mind for success rather than waiting for failures to criticize.
“locate that voice and turn it into your most loving, encouraging, soft yet strong, positive, confident tone. The way that you would be talking to someone if you were in your highest possible self and you were talking to their highest potential.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 12:59
Change your inner voice tone to loving and encouraging, like speaking to someone's highest potential. Most people use a critical, whiny, or angry internal voice that triggers negative emotions.
“I recommend that you create a list of affirmations starting with the words I deserve and I give myself permission to. And then fill out what you deserve and what you give yourself permission to do.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 13:51
Create affirmations starting with 'I deserve' and 'I give myself permission to.' Write them daily and speak them in a positive, loving voice to train your mind proactively.
“If our parents criticized us when we were young and, that turned into criticism that we now do with ourselves, it usually was because they were trying to get us to do something that was good for us or to stop doing something that was bad for us.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 4:18
Self-criticism often comes from parents who criticized to protect you from danger. This becomes an automatic inner voice, but criticism focuses on what NOT to do rather than helping you succeed.
“What we should be doing is congratulating ourselves and saying, hey. Good try. You tried something else. That's great. You know, you might have to try 10 or 20 or 50 more things before you find the thing that works.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 8:49
Congratulate yourself for trying something new. In knowledge work environments, you need to fail often to innovate. Generalize your long-term success identity around short-term setbacks.
“What you haven't learned how to do yet is take the valuable part of the criticism, which is watching how you're doing, seeing whether you're making improvement, and tracking your progress, and then marrying it to something that helps you improve long term like saying something encouraging.”
— Eben Pagan▶ 10:20
Helpful self-awareness watches your progress and speaks encouragingly. Harmful self-criticism takes the same observation but interprets it negatively and speaks harshly to yourself.
A systematic approach to changing your inner dialogue from destructive criticism to supportive encouragement
Transform your voice tone
Locate your critical inner voice and change it to your most loving, encouraging, soft yet strong, positive, confident tone - like speaking to someone's highest potential
Create permission affirmations
Write affirmations starting with 'I deserve' and 'I give myself permission to' covering areas like health, achievement, success, and wealth
Practice daily affirmation routine
Start with 10 affirmations daily, write them out, then say them in your mind using your new positive, loving, encouraging tone
Reframe temporary setbacks
When facing failure, say 'I'm a winner who always succeeds long-term, this was a temporary setback' instead of 'I failed, I'm a failure'
Congratulate attempts
When something doesn't work, congratulate yourself for trying and remind yourself you may need to try 10, 20, or 50 more things before finding what works
Your mind runs a constant inner radio of self-talk that most people don't notice but significantly impacts performance
Eben explains that unless you're a monk who has meditated for twenty years, you are thinking hundreds of thoughts per minute in continuous dialogue
Self-criticism is always self-referential - when you criticize others, you're actually criticizing yourself
Eben states that 'we really can only see or perceive what we see and perceive in ourselves' so the mind acts as a filter or mirror
Failure in knowledge work environments is actually learning and should be congratulated, not criticized
Joe Sugarman, one of the most famous marketers of all time, tells stories of failure as lessons because he thinks they're even more valuable than stories of success
Transform your inner voice to the most loving, encouraging, soft yet strong, positive, confident tone
Eben explains that emotion is triggered by auditory tone - loving, soft, encouraging voices trigger positive emotions while harsh, critical voices trigger negative emotions
Create affirmations starting with 'I deserve' and 'I give myself permission to' and practice them daily
Eben personally spent years writing out lists of affirmations with these phrases, including examples like 'I deserve health, high levels of achievement' and 'I give me permission to achieve success and wealth and happiness'
Generalize long-term success identity around short-term setbacks instead of the reverse
Instead of saying 'I failed, that means I'm a loser and failure,' say 'I'm a winner and I always succeed in the long run, and this was a little temporary setback'
Self-criticism comes from parents who criticized to protect from danger, creating an automatic inner voice
Eben explains that parents criticized thinking it was love and protection from danger, and this voice becomes automatic - 'they didn't need a parent around because they automatically criticize themselves'
Your mind runs a constant inner radio of self-talk that most people don't notice but significantly impacts performance
▶ 0:30Self-criticism is always self-referential - when you criticize others, you're actually criticizing yourself
▶ 2:27Failure in knowledge work environments is actually learning and should be congratulated, not criticized
▶ 7:40Transform your inner voice to the most loving, encouraging, soft yet strong, positive, confident tone
▶ 12:20Create affirmations starting with 'I deserve' and 'I give myself permission to' and practice them daily
▶ 13:51Generalize long-term success identity around short-term setbacks instead of the reverse
▶ 11:41Self-criticism comes from parents who criticized to protect from danger, creating an automatic inner voice
▶ 4:18Claim: “Criticism helps you improve and avoid mistakes”
Reframe: You don't win when you criticize yourself - criticism focuses on what NOT to do rather than what TO do
Claim: “Failure means you're bad at something and should feel ashamed”
Reframe: Failure is learning and should be congratulated in complex knowledge work environments
Claim: “Self-love and encouragement are weak or unrealistic”
Reframe: Loving yourself and encouraging yourself is the foundation for sustainable success
“You don't win when you criticize yourself and when you speak to yourself in a negative tone of voice, in a harsh tone, when you're mean to yourself inside of your mind.”
“You can't sail to England by trying to avoid America.”
“Whether it's you're criticizing yourself or you're criticizing someone else, you're always criticizing yourself.”
“We want to turn the radio station to the loving myself station.”
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Coaching Strategies
Common Mistakes
Attention is our most valuable resource because humans are uniquely able to marshal and direct their awareness through conscious will
Eben Pagan explains humans are 'the species that is able to Marshall our attention and through some you know spiritual trickery' can concentrate and direct it to body, emotions, thoughts, goals, relationships, learning skills or projects
Using attention intentionally costs attention itself, similar to how transmitting electricity costs electricity or using money costs money
Eben Pagan uses specific analogies: 'when you transmit energy over electrical lines you actually lose some of the electricity' and 'if you take money and deposit it into a bank account and wire it to someone it costs money' to explain that 'to direct attention kind of costs attention'
AI tools can replace manual processes for developing coaching messaging and website content through structured prompts and fill-in-the-blank templates
The reviewer was manually using ChatGPT conversations to gain clarity on communicating unique talents as a coach and bringing website to life, but Eben's program provided pre-designed prompts that ask simple questions like 'what do you love most about coaching' and generate complete bio and messaging content
You don't need a website at the beginning of your coaching business - focus on getting clients first, then build infrastructure as you scale
The reviewer has had 'a steady flow of clients coming to me without having a website' and is only now building one because she's 'at the point where I'm scaling my business and I feel like okay now I need the infrastructure of a website'
