Quieting Your Inner Critic & Tuning Into Your Inner Mentor
You know that negative voice in your head that critiques, undermines, and doubts you and your goals?
It says awful things to you like:
That’s your inner critic.
Your saboteur.
Your inner bully.
Whatever you choose to call it, this bad boy is standing in the way of living out your best life. Personally, I tend to use inner critic because that how I first heard the concept explained, so let’s stick with that for our purposes here.
The inner critic is a closed-minded voice that’s fixed on avoiding change and taking risk. It’s loud, savvy, and relentless. It sees all the reasons why something won’t work, all the ways that you will humiliate yourself and fail those you love. It fixates on the certainty that your dreams are out of reach and you are out of your mind for even considering setting your sights on them. It tells you over and over again, in creative, insidious ways, that you are not worthy of success, love, abundance, peace, belonging.
Chill, eh?
Now, before we jump into how to quiet that voice, it’s important to understand precisely what it is, what it isn’t, and what its purpose is.
First things first, you have to understand that this critical inner voice is absolutely NOT your true rational voice.
The inner critic is not your intuition, and it is not just “realistic thinking”.
Despite bombarding you from inside your own head, and perhaps even sounding like you, the inner critic is, in fact, a separate entity.
This negative commentary is inspired by demanding characters from your past or present, a combination of many voices you’ve heard in your life, each piping up at precise and opportune moments to inflict blows to your enthusiasm and self-esteem.
The voices work together to stifle your growth, your success, and your sense of self-worth. If you believe what these voices say about you, you run the real risk of living a life based on fear and doubt. Of playing small.
It is so important to learn how to quiet your inner critic, so you can live a big, sexy, powerful life. You’ve got shit to do, and kowtowing to your inner critic is not gonna get you where you’re going, sister.
So let’s dive into precisely how to actually do that, shall we?
Create a persona for your inner critic.
According to Tara Mohr, author of Playing Big, the first step in learning to quiet the inner critic is to create a character – a persona – to represent it in your mind’s eye.
She asserts that by fleshing out these shady characters you humanize them, which makes it easier to see them for who they really are: scared, anxious people who want to protect you from suffering.
These protectors do not often go about their work in a loving way (criticisms and name-calling aren’t very pleasant or obvious forms of protection), but that’s their core motivation, to protect you from doing scary things at any cost. Scolding, belittling words are fair game if it means you don’t get hurt.
The problem is, the inner critic doesn’t see how GREAT things could turn out if we step outside your comfort zone and try some of the scary things you’ve been avoiding. It doesn’t have the capacity to see - let alone appreciate - the potential growth that can come from sticking your neck out there.
There is so much to learn from failure, and so much opportunity to succeed, if only you can move past that protective guard dog telling you to BEWARE and just go after it.
You mustn’t let this pessimistic, fearful voice dictate what kind of life you’re going to live.
You are more capable and worthy of playing big in your life than your inner critic believes you to be.
So, start with visualizing who this inner critic is so you can tell him/her/them, “Thanks for your concern, dude, but I’ve got this one.”
Identify whose voice the inner critic uses.
Now, it’s also necessary to distinguish between the intention of the inner critic (to keep you safe), and the voice it uses to deliver the message. Listen to what the voice says to you. Who does it sound like? When did this voice first appear in your life? Your brain is very good at using memory to communicate with you. So if protection is the name of the game, your brain is going to curate the most effective memories inside to shut you down: this means it goes for the words of the bullies, the naysayers, the abusers, the authoritarians.
Whose words/voices make up your inner critic? Perhaps a harsh teacher? A critical caregiver? A group of mean kids in school?
Perhaps it’s more abstract than a specific person: maybe more like a compilation of fashion magazine articles about body image or pleasing people. Consider the movies you’ve watched, the ads you’ve seen, the friends you’ve heard belittling themselves….
Spend some time reflecting on this. There’s no right or wrong way to do it if the result has you recognizing the character(s), acknowledging it/them, and then getting on with doing your own thing despite the manipulative shit it spews at you.
You might find it amusing to notice your inner critic going at you in their typical way, yammering on about how shitty and destined for failure you are. But instead of believing it and feeling shitty about yourself, you blithely respond with something like,
“Oh, hello, you silly critic. I see you there, and I know what you’re trying to do. It won’t work, though, so ta-ta, off you go!!”
Notice that this isn’t an aggressive or antagonistic response (Mohr says approaching it that way almost always backfires). You’re simply diminishing the power that that voice has over you, feeling secure enough within that it barely even registers anymore.
How does that sound to you? Imagine for a moment how your life would be different if the voice of your inner critic had no pull anymore? What might you try? What might you believe about yourself?
Now you might be wondering, “Cool, Katelyn. But without the voice of the critic, how will I know when I’m making bad decisions, or how do I stop myself from just impulsively following every whim? Doesn’t this voice serve a useful purpose?”
Here’s the secret: deep down, you actually already know what to do in most situations.
Your wise inner mentor is always there inside you, patiently waiting for you to listen to her. She is generative, optimistic, solutions-oriented, and she is 100% on your side.
The challenge is that your inner critic can be so loud that you forget to check in with her, especially with big decisions. You get distracted and overwhelmed by the intrusive assertions of the critic, losing your sense of direction and shaking your confidence. In other words, you get small.
The good news it that the inner critic only has the power to keep you from living our best lives if you let it. You can develop resilience and gumption. You can become UNFUCKWITHABLE.
Sound good? Well, then I invite you to start working to identify who is speaking, and amplifying the voice of the wise inner mentor over that of your scared inner critic. It’s juicy work, I promise you.
“Playing Big is being more loyal to your dreams than to your fears.”
You can learn more about the inner critic, and other insights from Tara Mohr here.
In solidarity and with so much love,
