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If your confidence feels low and you don’t know why, you’re probably doing 5 tiny things every day that quietly destroy it. In this powerful solo episode, I walk you through the hidden habits that slowly erode your self-belief without you even realising. They seem small. They look “normal.” But they shape how you think, speak, choose, and show up in every area of your life. Once you can see them, you can stop them. We explore the inner patterns that make you shrink, second-guess yourself, and feel like you’re never quite enough, no matter how much you do. You’ll discover what your body is trying to tell you, how these patterns formed in the first place, and the simple shifts I use to rebuild trust with myself from the inside out.

If you’ve ever felt stuck, burnt out, or constantly hard on yourself, this conversation will shine a light on what’s really going on beneath the surface. By the end, you’ll know the 5 things to stop doing so you can protect your energy, rebuild your confidence, and finally step back into your power.

In this episode we chat about:

• The sneaky habit that makes you abandon yourself in everyday moments (4:17)
• The mental loop that has you second-guessing everything (8:37)
• The pattern that keeps you “preparing” but never actually starting (13:51)
• The subtle way you push away good things without realising it (19:12)
• The obsession that ties your worth to other people’s opinions (24:14)

Episode resources:

• Mastering Your Mean Girl by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Open Wide by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Comparisonitis by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Time Magic by Melissa Ambrosini and Nick Broadhurst (book)

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The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy.

[00:00:00] The Melissa Ambrosini Show. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa bestselling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, open, wide, comparisonitis and Time Magic, and I’m here to remind you that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word. Each week I’ll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of motivation so that you can create epic change in.

Your own life and become the best version of yourself possible. Are you ready? Beautiful. Beautiful.

Hey, beautiful. Welcome back to the show. I’m so excited about this episode, but I need to let you know before we dive in. There is a huge storm happening in the background right now. Hail trees are literally sideways. A branch just landed on our roof, so. If you hear [00:01:00] stuff happening in the background, that is what is going on, but this is my time to record this for you, and we are going for it.

We’re not gonna let a storm stop us because this episode is so important. I have been having so many conversations with my friends, with clients, literally so many people right now about. How loud their inner mean girl is. And for those of you that haven’t read, mastering Your Mean Girl, your inner mean girl is your inner critic.

The voice that says you are not good enough, you are not smart enough. Who do you think you are? That voice, we all have that voice. And some people say that we have between 60 and 80,000 thoughts a day. Now just imagine how many of those thoughts are coming from your inner man, girl. A lot of them. And before we dive any deeper, I just want you to know that if you have this voice, like I said before, everyone has this voice.

You are not alone. Michelle Obama has shared that her imposter [00:02:00] syndrome never really went away. Like even standing in the White House, like she still felt that imposter syndrome. Emma Watson has talked about moments of feeling like a fraud in Hollywood. So if you feel that way, you are not broken. You are human.

Okay. So by the end of this episode, you will know exactly where your inner critic is in charge and how to lovingly take back your power once and for all. So 10 years ago I wrote Mastering Your Main Goal because my inner main goal was so loud, she was running and ruining my life. I was so exhausted. I had anxiety, I had a huge health breakdown.

And in the hospital I finally woke up. There was times in my life before that where I was a professional dancer dancing on the stage at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. On the outside, my life looked shining on the inside. I was drowning in self-loathing and fear. And we know [00:03:00] from stress research that chronic unaddressed stress can change your immune system, your hormones, even how your brain processes emotions.

So this isn’t just in your head, your body is listening to that inner mango all day long. She is built on fear. She holds onto old stories. She loves to compare, and she lives in fear, but she is not the enemy. She just cannot be the one in the driver’s seat of your life anymore. It’s time, it’s done. She needs to get in the boot, put her in the boot, and you reclaim your power and get back into the driver’s seat of your life.

Okay? Why do we need to do this? Because psychologist Kristin Neff’s research on self-compassion shows that people who are kinder to themselves are actually more resilient and more likely to take healthy action than people who just beat themselves up all the time. I’ve been there. I have totally been [00:04:00] there.

So as you listen, notice which signs land for you? There is five. I’m gonna go through all of them and you don’t need to judge, just get curious and mentally score yourself, or you can jot it down in your journal or the notes section on your phone, which one or maybe all of them that you resonate with. So the first sign that you inner goal is running your life is you say yes when your whole body is saying no.

You’re probably nodding your head right now. Yes, I do that. Yes, I do that. So this is where you order yes to invitations, to favors, to work, to family demands, even when you are exhausted, even when your body is saying no. And then afterwards you feel resentful, but you still show up with a smile. So in that moment, you abandon your own needs so no one is disappointed or upset.

That’s what you did in that moment. And we do not want to do this. So you need to unpack why you are [00:05:00] people pleasing, why that is happening for you, and this is where you can do some inner child healing work. Like why do you feel like you need to say yes when every cell in your body is saying no? You are the only person that can answer that question.

Now doctors and psychologists are now talking a lot about the link between chronic people pleasing, emotional repression, and things like burnout, fatigue and autoimmune issues, and trauma expert Dr. Gabor. Marta even says that when we don’t know how to say no, our body will eventually say it for us through illness, and that is exactly what happened to me in 2010.

So I don’t want that to happen to you. I used to be a chronic people pleaser saying yes to every gig that came my way. Every collaboration, every family thing, every friend invite, I would just say yes. Even though my body was saying, no, you need to rest. You need to slow down. But my [00:06:00] main girl was saying, you cannot let them down.

And it wasn’t until I ended up in hospital in 2010 where everything shifted for me, where I was like, I am living for everybody else and not for myself, and I’ve had enough. I’m not doing that anymore. And then so not only does your inner mingle tell you to say yes when you really wanna say no, she then tells you if you say no, they will think you’re selfish.

If you rest, you are lazy. If you’re not constantly available, you will be forgotten. Her deepest fear is that you will be rejected or abandoned if you set a healthy boundary. Okay? And the way that this shows up is in your work, you’ll say yes to things when you don’t want to. Maybe you say yes to personal invitations, business invitations when you really don’t want to, or you join things like WhatsApp groups and committees and school extras, even though you don’t want to, but you do it out of fear.

So I want you to pause for a second and. I want you to think about the last [00:07:00] time you did this. Maybe it was yesterday, maybe it was this morning, and I want to invite you to a new way of being, and that is that every invitation that lands in your lap, every single invitation, you do not respond then and there you pause.

You stop. And if someone is standing in front of you and invites you to their uncle’s 70th birthday, whatever it is you say, I’m gonna check my calendar and I’ll get back to you. Or you can say, that sounds amazing, or whatever it is, say something nice, kind, positive. Acknowledge the invitation and say, I’m gonna check my calendar and get back to you.

That gives you space. To go and sit and listen to your body and tune in and ask yourself, coming from a place of deep love and respect for myself, what would I choose here? And then you can come back and you can say, thank you for thinking of me. I’m unable to attend whatever it is. I’m not available for that, but [00:08:00] I’m cheering you on.

Whatever it is. It actually doesn’t matter. But what matters is you speak from your heart and you acknowledge and you say, thank you for the invitation, but I’m unable. I’m unable to do it. Every honest no. Creates space for a full body. Yes. And when you say a loving no, you are creating space for something more magical.

Yes. And Brene Brown says, clear is kind. Clear. Boundaries are loving, not selfish. So that is the first sign. Your Inner Ming goal is running your life. You say yes when your whole body is saying no. Okay. So the second one is. You criticize your body, your work, your mothering, all your choices on autopilot.

So the first thing you do when you look in the mirror is you scan for floors. You nitpick your work, your parenting, your food choices, your house, and you rarely acknowledge what you did. Well. So body image [00:09:00] research suggests that the vast majority of women are unhappy with at least one part of their body.

When almost everyone is criticizing themselves, that harsh inner dialogue starts to feel normal, but it does not mean it’s healthy, it is not Healthy. Studies also show that repetitive negative self-talk can strengthen those neural pathways, so the more you actually repeat, I am not enough, even if it’s just in your mind.

The more automatic that thought becomes. But the beautiful news is that we can rewire our brain with new kinder patterns, which I talk a lot about in mastering your M goal. And I know for myself, like this has been huge for me. I used to be a professional dancer, actress, model, and TV presenter, and so I was in an industry where they would literally tear you apart in front of you.

Say your thighs are too big, too tall, too short, too fat, too thin, like that is literally what happened. And so there was a [00:10:00] lot of self-loathing, a lot of criticizing my body in my earlier years. And it really affected me. It really affected me. And at the time, everyone I was around was doing it as well. So it kind of became normal, but this is not how I wanna live my life.

And I would never speak to my daughter or my best friends like this. So why was I speaking to myself like that? That was huge for me when I had my rock bottom moment. And the thing is like you are a pure miracle. The fact that you are here, that you are born is an absolute miracle that your parents came together, created you.

That is a miracle. One in 400 trillion chances of you being born and you came through. Your body is a miracle. You have been gifted this incredible body, and yet we are so harsh to it at times. Demi Lovato wrote a whole song called I Love Me about being brutal with herself, [00:11:00] and constantly comparing and asking, when is loving myself going to be enough?

I have full goosebumps. Serena Williams has spoken about learning to be okay with looking different to other women and deciding that different is good. Adele, she has been really honest about her body being picked apart for years and how painful it was that many of the harshest comments came from other women.

I mean, wow. So we all have to work on this. So your mean girl fuels this, and here’s some tricks that your inner mean girl will play. She will tell you that your worth is in your appearance, your productivity, and your output. She compares you to other women, other mothers, other business owners. She moves the goalpost so you never arrive at enough.

And other ways that she shows up are you might reread an email 10 times and still think it sounds stupid, or you look at a [00:12:00] photo with your child and only see your flaws, not the magic in that photo, or you replay conversations in your head and cringe at everything you said. So here’s what we do. If you are nodding and you’re like, yes, my inner mean girl does this, not you, your inner Ming girl.

Let’s do a kind reframe from every criticism. Find one truth filled kindness so my stomach looks fat. Reframe that to I carried three healthy, amazing children. I’m a bad mom becomes I’m learning and I deeply love my children. And a mantra for you could be my body is my home, my vessel for my soul. I love it.

I’m so grateful for it. You could create your own mantra, so any time your inner mean girl tries to criticize your body, your work, your mothering, or anything, you reframe it very quickly and come back to the truth. Okay. Do not let her run [00:13:00] off with her nonsense. And remember that you are such a miracle.

The fact that you are here means that you are a miracle and that you matter. And it’s actually quite selfish of us. I’m just gonna say it. It’s selfish of us to berate our bodies because there’s some people that are in hospital right now that don’t have an able body, and here we are. Nitpicking the size of our thighs, whatever it is, there’s some people that can’t work and we nitpick everything.

There’s some people that desperately wanna have children, and we are tearing ourselves apart the way that we mother. So it’s time to reframe that. It’s time to stop criticizing your body, your work, your mothering, your choices, and reclaim that. Number three, you procrastinate or perfection eyes so much that you never actually start.

So if you have a big dream or an [00:14:00] idea, but they stay in your journal or your notes app, this means your inner mean girl is running the show. Or you wait for the perfect time, quote unquote, the perfect time or the perfect plan that never arrives. Or you tell yourself that you are quote unquote researching, but really you are hiding.

Psychology research shows that perfectionism is closely linked with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and burnout. That constant, never good enough, pressure wears down your mental health. And perfectionism sounds like high standards, but in the data, it actually looks like self-attack and paralysis.

Now, decades ago, I have been in this situation. I would sit on a project for way too long, a program, a book, a podcast, or even event. I would talk about how I wanted it to be flawless before anyone saw it. And my Ming girl told me, who are you to do this? And it’s not ready yet. And then I realized what was actually going on.

My Inner Ming [00:15:00] goal was trying to hold me back from actually starting and launching these things. And even world-class performers wrestle with this. Adele has spoken about stage fright and the fear of letting people down to the point where walking on stage felt terrifying for her body. Beyonce famously created an alter ego, Sasha Fierce, to help her step around her fear and perfectionism and actually get on stage.

And I talk about this in my books and in my programs and to my clients. If you have fear, come up about showing up online. Create an alter ego like Sasha Fierce so that you can step into the energy of that woman. That woman is you, is the embodied version of you, and she is always there. She lives within you.

Your inner man girl’s volume is just turned up. So turn her down and step into that version of yourself, that [00:16:00] confident embodied version of yourself. Because if you don’t, your inner man girl, she will convince you that perfectionism equals safety. She will tell you that if it’s perfect, no one can criticize you.

She will say, if you never start, you never fail. She pretends to protect you, but really she’s keeping you stuck. So how this shows up, and I’ve seen it so many times, is like you rewrite your about page for months, or you rewrite your offer for months and you never end up launching. Or you constantly take courses but never implement, always needing to just learn one more thing.

Or you tell yourself that you’ll start on Monday or next year, or when life calms down or when the kids go to school. I know you are probably nodding your head right now, so I want this truth to land with you. Done is better than perfect. There is no such thing. If you [00:17:00] have put your heart into something and you launch it.

Wonderful. An I maybe not be dotted and a T. Maybe not be crossed, maybe, but who cares? Do not let your inner mean girl grab onto that and stop you. So here’s what you can do to start to reprogram. This is post the thing that you wanna post. Tell someone about your idea. Join the mastermind, launch the podcast, write the book.

Create the first slide. Set the date. Here’s two mantras for you. I learn by doing, not by waiting. I am available for messy, beautiful progress. That is the third sign you procrastinate or perfection so much that you never actually start. That is a big one for a lot of people and a big one that your inner mean girl holds onto.

I have been biohacking for over a decade [00:18:00] now, before biohacking was even cool. And one of my favorite biohacking devices that we have in our home and our car and we travel with is called the bio Pod by cell state. So it generates a pulsed magnetic S scaler earth frequency field, which supports coherent alpha waves for a range of up to 40 meters in diameter.

So this supports the parasympathetic nervous system boosting biological communication in brain to cell and cell to cell pathways. Now with wifi everywhere, electromagnetic fields everywhere, this is necessary to maintain healthy homeostasis, balance, and optimal circadian rhythm function. So grab one for your home, one for your car.

Take them wherever you go. Wherever you travel, you just plug them in while you’re on the airplane. Take them to your hotel, your Airbnb, everywhere you [00:19:00] go. All you have to do is head to sell state.co. Protect yourself, protect your family, and use the code Melissa to get 20% off. Sign Number four, you sabotage good things because you think you don’t deserve them.

Oof. So here’s what happens. When love money, opportunities, health upgrades arrive. You feel uncomfortable. You pick fights, you overspend, you overeat, you ghost people or create drama. You drop your healthy habits right when they are working. Have you been there? This one is deep. For a lot of people it is so unconscious.

But if you do those things and you notice, huh? Why? When I am always about to really thrive in my business or my relationship or my health, do I sabotage [00:20:00] And everything that I’ve shared so far requires going inward, sitting with yourself. Doing some inner child healing work and looking at where this story first began for you.

Because once you can identify where you can start to then see, ah, that’s where that story was planted. It’s actually not my truth, because the truth of who I am is unconditional love. I’m an infinite being. Perfect whole, complete, and all this stuff on top. All these layers on top are just inner mean girl rubbish psychologist Gail Hendrix calls this the upper limit problem.

That inner limit of how good we’re allowed to feel, where we unconsciously create drama or chaos to bring ourselves back down to what feels familiar. I have been here many times. You start attracting a [00:21:00] healthier relationship after doing the inner work, and then you just sabotage it because your inner mean girl whispers.

This can’t last. Something must be wrong with them, and then you push it away. And Oprah has spoken many times about how worthiness is the real work. Almost every single issue that we have comes back to worthiness. One of Oprah’s famous lines is, you alone are enough. I’ve got full body goosebumps. This is exactly what I’m talking about.

You alone are enough. And she’s said that for years, even as one of the most successful women on the planet now, if Oprah had to learn to feel worthy of her own life, it makes sense that you and I are learning this too. Your inner man girl fuels this by attaching to your old self image. I’m the one who gets rejected or cheated on or overlooked, and when life starts to upgrade, she [00:22:00] panics and tries to pull you back to what feels.

Familiar and quote unquote, safe. Safe for your nervous system because maybe as a child you had some traumatic event happen to you, and the only way that you could cope was by shrinking. And so that feels safe for you, but that’s actually not true Safety, true safety is deep worthiness. She will say things to you like, you’ll mess it up anyway.

Or if they really knew who you were, they would leave. How this can show up is when you get a new client or opportunity, she will instantly come in with fear and blow it up. Another way it could show up is that you feel really great in your relationship. You feel close, and then she starts nitpicking and testing, or maybe you finally feel great in your body, and then you go back to old habits that are not healthy for you.

So I want you to think about your upper limit moments, like Oprah said, where things feel quote unquote, too good, and your inner Ming [00:23:00] girl comes in. Here’s your reframe. Good things are not a glitch. They are. My new normal miracles happen all the time. To me, what we say aloud and in our mind will manifest.

So we need to place our hand on our heart. Repeat mantras that we actually wanna create in our life. It is safe for me to receive. I am worthy of love, support, and ease. Whatever it is for you, ride the discomfort wave instead of acting on it and sabotaging good things. Notice when you’re in Mango wants to do that and come back to the truth, which is you deserve everything.

The creator, God, the universe, whatever you believe in. Has laid out everything for you. You get to choose what you want, what you desire, but don’t want anything from a place of fear or lack. [00:24:00] Choose it because it’s like, I just would love that. Not because I need it, not because I’m lacking, but cool. That would be fun.

There’s a difference. Notice that difference. So that’s number four. Number five, you obsess over what others think and need constant gold stars to feel, okay, so this is where your mood rises and falls based on likes, comments, downloads, or praise. This is where a single throwaway comment can ruin your day.

You change your behavior to fit what you think others want. Now, research keeps finding links between heavy passive social media use and higher levels of anxiety and low mood, especially when you’re scrolling and comparing instead of actually connecting. This is one of the reasons why I wrote comparisonitis, how to stop comparing yourself to others and be genuinely happy.

Plenty of public figures now, avoid reading comments because of this. Like Selena Gomez, for example, has talked about how [00:25:00] stepping away from social media was huge for her mental health. Taylor Swift has openly said that even she has body image wobbles and that realizing everyone has them, helped her relax into her own skin.

So many celebrities do not have social media. They do not check the comments because they have said. It is not good for their mental health. So this is happening to a lot of people. You are not alone. I’m telling you this because I want you to know that you’re not alone. So your main girl fuels this and makes you believe that other people’s opinions are more trustworthy than your own inner wisdom.

She pushes you to curate your life instead of live it. She’s addicted to comparison, especially on social media. And this is how it might show up day to day where you delete posts that didn’t perform well enough. You hesitate to share your true opinions or desires in case someone disapproves, you’re a people pleaser, you replay conversations wondering, did I [00:26:00] say something wrong?

So let’s shift this. Instead of focusing on self create to serve. To help other people, not to impress how can I help someone else today, even if it’s just one person. How can I help someone today? Okay. And work out what your own inner gold stars are. Like, did I show up in my truth? Was I kind, did I honor my values here?

So that is the metrics you wanna be looking at. And what you can do is take a break from social media, turn off your notifications. I literally have no notifications on my phone whatsoever. My phone is always on silent and most of the time on airplane mode. One of the best things you can do, and I talk about this in comparison, is, is set a limit for social media apps on your phone.

Give yourself 30 minutes. That’s it. Get on post, [00:27:00] comment, interact, then get off and do not scroll. Your value is inherent. No one on the internet can give it or take it away. And if you are wobbly around this, there’s some inner work that needs to be done here. So that is number five. You obsess over what others think and need constant gold stars to feel okay.

Give yourself gold stars. Actually, better yet, feel in your body that you are gold already. You don’t need gold stars from yourself or from anyone else. And if you do, that is a sign your inner mingle is running the show. So let’s just recap these. Number one, you say yes when your body says no. Number two, you criticize yourself on autopilot.

Number three, you procrastinate or perfectionist Instead of starting. Number four, you sabotage good things because you don’t feel worthy. Number five, you obsess over others’ opinions and chase gold stars. If you recognize yourself in any of these, you are not alone. There is [00:28:00] nothing wrong with you. Your inner mean girl formed them to keep you safe, but they are not your truth, and you don’t need to live them out anymore.

She is not qualified to drive your life anymore. She doesn’t even have her license. Get her in the boot of your car. The thing is, she’s always gonna be there, but let’s turn the volume down on her and put her in the boot. And remember, even people like Michelle Obama, Adele, Oprah, Emma Watson, Serena Williams, they all talk about these things too.

So you are not alone. Choose one sign to focus on this week. Journal about it. Where does this show up for me? What is one different choice that I can make next time? And then you can share that commitment with a friend or your partner or your community for accountability. Do it all together and please come and share with me.

On Instagram, what is the action that you are going to commit to for each of these signs or even just one? I would love to hear and [00:29:00] just a reminder that you are so worthy, you are so powerful. You are more than your inner Ming girl. Voice inside your head. Honor yourself for being here, for doing this work.

The world needs the real you, not the you with a very loud inner mean girl. I really hope you got a lot out of this, and if you did, please share it with your friends. You can take a screenshot, share it on your social media, email it to them, text it to them. Do whatever you got to do to get this in your ears.

Until next time, don’t forget that love is sexy. Healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word.

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Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be SO grateful if you could leave me a review on Apple podcasts, that way we can inspire and educate even more people together.

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P.P.S. Please seek advice from a qualified holistic practitioner before starting any new health practice.