October 28, 2024

Learning To Say No To Your Inner Critic

While being a little critical of yourself can provide you with the reality check you sometimes need to make important changes in your life, constant self-criticism can lead to stalled progress and the inability to accomplish the necessary goals for your happiness.

Learning how to silence or ignore your inner critic is, therefore, an essential life skill to helping you achieve your dreams and live the life that fulfills you.

Here are some strategies that will help you say NO to your inner critic and focus on the positive things in life that matter most to you.

What is an inner critic? Born out of fear, sadness, and low self-worth, it is the voice in our minds that is always criticizing our choices, our actions, and our bodies. It is the thought pattern that tells you, “This is not good enough,” or “If only this were different.” You lose hope and happiness when you occupy this constant state of judging yourself.

Naming your critic can help you recognize it when it rears its ugly head and it can help you place it into perspective. Some appropriate names for your inner critic are The Nag, The Perfectionist, The Voice, or The Gremlin. Giving it a less-than-dignified name also keeps its power over you low. When you start to hear it, just remember it’s just The Perfectionist talking, not someone important.

Putting your mistakes into perspective can often help lessen the impact of your inner critic. Instead of assuming the worst from a setback, examine it rationally to determine the effect it is likely to have. With the right perspective, you can quiet that voice quickly.

After a misstep or blunder, be sure to question if anyone else even noticed or cared. As it turns out, we each are not, in fact, the center of the universe, and most people do not even register others’ errors. Before deciding you just embarrassed yourself in front of the whole office, question who was paying attention.

Consider how another person would respond to the way you talk to yourself. What would your spouse or best friend say about your mistake? What would they say about how you are talking about yourself about your mistake? An alternative to this is, if you wouldn’t say it to someone you love, why are you saying it to yourself? Be kinder to yourself and remember to ‘let yourself off the hoo.’ Doing so will help remove that inner critic’s voice from your mind.

Develop some pat responses to your inner critic and practice them regularly. The minute you hear that voice beginning to criticize, respond with “So what?” or “Who cares?” Another favorite is “Big deal!” Take away the critic’s power to influence how you feel and what you do by minimizing your responses and move on.

Your inner critic creates feelings of shame in you because you keep your mistakes secret. When you make a mistake, admit it so you can move on.

Tell someone else what happened or apologize if your mistake impacted others. Then, your inner critic has nothing to complain about, and you will feel better for voicing your feelings instead of keeping them bottled inside.

Learning to accept yourself as you are and silencing the voice that is always telling you what is bad and wrong means admitting you are not perfect. Hold yourself to realistic rather than perfectionist standards to find happiness and peace with the chaos that is life sometimes delivers to our doorstep.

Mistakes teach you things, and you are the person you are because of all the good AND bad things that have happened before. So silence that inner critic by remembering that mistakes are inevitable and growth wouldn’t take place without them.

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If you liked this article, check out my Substack Newsletter piece entitled,"Prioritizing Your Life 101" at: https://theunreliablemind.substack.com/p/prioritizing-your-life-101