Taming Your Inner Critic

Last night at 3.00am I was unexpectedly woken up by a mosquito buzzing in my ear.

You know what it's like. You are in this delicious deeply replenishing sleep. And then that noise wakes you up and?you are wide eyed fully awake. The thoughts start racing. You look at the clock and your heart sinks.?

The Voice Inside My Head

As I lay there, the voice came in. The one that lists all the problems in my life, all the reasons why my dreams won't come true and everything that is wrong with me.

In the exhausted silence of the night, the voice grew louder and more strident. With the frustrated tossing and turning of my head on the pillow, all I could do was to buy completely into the lies it was telling me. Powerless against its forceful tirade about how valueless and incapable I was.

My doom peddler was out of its cage and now solidly in charge. It was going to be a long night.

One of the things any changemaker or anyone who wants to do something interesting and new has to contend with is the voice of their inner critic. The one that has them doubt themselves and buy into the story that they have nothing to offer and they aren't going to make it. Often it is crippling.

How we deal with that part of ourselves?determines whether we rise or fall at the altar for a better life and a better world.

The Real Job Of The Inner Critic

That voice inside my head was out of control. Scrolling Instagram to distract it wasn't enough. There seemed that there was nothing I could do to drown it out. In desperation I reached out for some kind of sleep relaxation.

And that is when the breakthrough happened. As I let go, I realised that I had been trying to turn away from the voice. When what I needed to do was to face it straight on.

I reminded myself that it wasn't trying to kill it me. ?It was trying to protect me. ?

The inner critic's job is not to tell us the truth. It is to keep us in our comfort zone - tied to what we know. ?And it was doing that perfectly.

An Outdated Legacy

We created the inner critic to keep us safe by fitting into the ecosystems, relationship webs and societal expectations that made up the environment and contexts we grew up in.

We set it up to keep us small, insignificant and vanilla flavoured enough that we would not stand out. So that we could belong to the established order and no-one would hurt us. ?

It moulded us into who we needed to be to survive in the ocean of the status quo we swam in as children.

Underneath its harsh words, what it is really saying is:?"Don't rock the boat. Be perfect based on what others want. ?Please them so they accept you and appease them so that you can avoid all conflict. On no account show them who you really are, be different or succeed in dreams that are outside the norm.'

As I lay there, I turned towards that part of me. I recognised it for the scared child I knew it to be. I used my other voice - my centred resourced wise voice: 'I know you are scared. Yes we are way out of our comfort zone and I get that you are panicking because we don't know how to do this. But it's ok. We are going to work this out - one step at a time together. And we can get help on the way if we need it'.

In relating to it in a new self-soothing way, immediately the anxiety eased. The fear had been acknowledged. The inner critic had done its job of warning me of danger - so that I could be discerning in how I approached what I did next.

Don't Let It Drive Your Car

In my dark moments, my favourite quotation to turn to is by Elizabeth Gilbert.

What she says is this. If you are going to be off on any kind of adventure you have to accept that fear is always going to be part of the journey. That means the inner critic is always going to be in the car. But what you have to make sure of is that it isn't driving, nor that it is choosing the music.

The inner critic is just that scared part of us. It was never designed to determine the course of our life. The problem is that we let it. ?Instead?of remembering that we were always meant to grow beyond it.

Louise Le Gat is the Founder of The Purpose-Led Company. She guides leaders who are at a pivotal moment to become the purpose-led leaders of the new future we need now - by supporting them to ignite their true potential, actualise their unique purpose and step into their next level impact. You can read more articles like this or find out more here.?