Today I want to talk to you about that voice within you that constantly criticises you.
It doesn’t matter if you are the most intelligent person in the world, everybody has the critic inside, that voice that tells you: “You’re not enough. You will never be enough. You are always wrong. You are useless”. We all have it.
What is the purpose of our inner critic?
Why do we all have it? Because the inner critic is related to the survival instinct. In order to survive, we have to judge the external circumstances. We have to judge other people. And we have to judge ourselves. Those who don’t have this critical voice don’t survive for long.
This voice has been there since when you are very young. In the eyes of a child, life is full of dangers. Kids go to sleep at night, it is dark and they are scared. A little brother or sister is born and they think: “OMG! My parents will abandon me and only love the little brother/sister. The teacher compliments a classmate instead of them and they think the are not good enough.
You begin to judge yourself, circumstances and others. You become convinced that your present circumstances will never make you happy, and it takes something else to be happy. So the belief is formed at that point: “I will be happy when… I will be happy when I find the boyfriend. I will be happy when I buy my house. I will be happy when I get that particular job”, not knowing that once you begin to form that belief, the circle never ends. You buy the house and you are happy. After five, six months you begin to think: “I would like a bigger house, I would like a terrace, etc. You find the boyfriend, however, something goes wrong and you start complaining about the boyfriend. It’s an endless circle.
When you have this belief within you: “I will be happy when…” it will never end. This inner voice makes you believe that pain is necessary to be happy and you have to suffer to be happy.
Imagine you put your hand on a hot stove. What happens? Pain. One second and you take it off. You get burned a little bit. If you stay with your hand on the hot stove for a while, you will lose your hand. The same thing applies to emotional pain. Pain is a signal that something is wrong and therefore action must be taken. Something needs to change. Pain is perfectly fine as a signal. The longer you stay in pain, the more you block all other functions. You block your creativity, you block your empathy and it becomes harder to find solutions.
How do I stop the inner critic?
When you make a mistake, your inner critic begins to say: “You are useless. You know nothing. What’s wrong with you?” Whereas on the other hand if you go to your best friend, he would tell you: “Don’t worry, everybody makes mistakes. You made a mistake. Learn from that. You will do better next time. You have to replace the inner critic with the voice of your best friend. Whenever you hear the inner critic who
criticises you, replace whatever the voice says with the voice of your best friend. You can even literally call your best friend, listen to what s/he has to say and then follow their advice.
Exercise
What does the inner critic tell you and what would your best friend tell you?
Replace the common sense of the best friend with your judge.
Watch the video in Italian with English subtitles.
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