Inner Critic

Hi Ladies, I missed you!  It’s been almost two months since I wrote something in my blog.  Guess, I was a bitten by my inner critic J.  Yes, our inner critic can hit us at any stage of our life.  Even successful people can be slowed down with their inner critic.  So, let me talk to you about inner critic and how to minimise its attack (minimise because as long as we live, we will encounter that inner critic.  We just need to control, pacify it, minimise its presence in our head so that we can continue in our planned journey and proceed with our goal.

Inner critic or self-criticism is that small voice in your head that tells you only the negative things.  Its effect can be detrimental because it will derail you from your goals and worst it can cause depression and anxiety. Therefore, we need to pacify and silence that annoying voice that says we are incapable, weak, ugly, fat, worthless and more negative things. 

Here are some of the things I do when I encounter that annoying voice in my head.

I monitor my thoughts.  When I start to hear myself telling me negative things, I immediately start to check my thoughts.  I get a pen and paper and start jotting down my self-critical judgments which tell me that I am loser, stupid, fat, ugly.  Just being conscious that the inner critic is under attack again can decrease the frequency and intensity of that annoying voice. 

I then evaluate my judgments.  I analyze when such thoughts come to mind and I check if there is a pattern. I evaluate if such thoughts are arbitrary, that is based on random thoughts, or if they are fair and factual.  For instance, does your inner critic say you are a loser?  If it does, evaluate what a loser is.  Normally, we would define a loser as somebody who sits in the house the whole day doing nothing.  If you only did this once because you had a pity party but then got up on your feet to do something, then you can tell your inner critic that it is wrong about you.

When my inner critic attacks me, I give it a list of my achievements.  I recite all my accomplishments to down its negative attacks.  I tell it I managed to bring up two wonderful kids alone, I have successful online businesses, I am helping a lot of single moms, etc.

You shouldn’t allow your inner critic to weigh you down and disrupt your momentum towards your goals.  The inner critic is easy to distinguish from constructive thoughts.  If after overeating at a party makes you think, “I am a glutton; I am a pig!”, that is condemnation.  But if you start thinking, “I will start eating healthy”, then that is conviction.  Your goal should be towards improvement and not to put yourself down.

How’s that for a thought provoking come back?