If you’ve ever felt terrified of failure or rejection, or heard a voice in your head tell you that you’re bad, wrong or inadequate, you’ve met your inner-critic. It’s a part of your psyche, like a sub-persona in your personality.
How often have you kept quiet when you wanted to say something worthwhile or held back from having fun or trying something bold because you were afraid of failure or ridicule?
The inner-critic is a frequent character in transformational coaching processes because it doesn’t like transformation so much…it prefers the status quo. Transformation entails risk of loss.
But three words about your inner-critic: It. Means. Well. It's trying to protect you
Against what?
Against (mostly perceived) future losses.
Usually, we react to the threat of future losses touted by the inner-critic in one of three ways:
1) become paralysed with fear and anxiety leading to procrastination;
2) try to be superhuman and never rest until burnout or health issues come knocking;
3) rebel and ignore it by disappearing into an alternative world divorced from reality never quite getting a grip.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
The inner-critic was born out of necessity for your survival at one time in your past. Today, it can be reassigned to a new role in your life.
It can be evolved into helping you discern the real from the false losses ahead of you and making wise decisions that align with your flourishing.
Like J who once he let go of his inner-critic’s pressure to prove he was worthy and evolved it into discerning the right job for him, was contacted out of the blue by the lucky organisation that is now his new employer.
Or E who once she let go of her inner-critic’s requirement to please others and evolved it into discerning those who were kind and caring from those who weren’t, started attracting the right kind of person into her life and bumped into a special person in a car park!
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Now, handling the inner-critic can be a little like rodeo. It will require some skill, courage and stamina. Meditation to strengthen your ability to focus and defuse from your thoughts and feelings is invaluable.
For more specific tools and approaches you can find a wide range online. In this week’s video I describe one of the tools from mindfulness psychology.
In this week’s video, I describe one of the tools from mindfulness psychology (see below).
Learning to sculpt your inner-experience and release your greatest gifts is a rich and fulfilling lifetime journey that will give you unparalleled joy every time you reach a new level of discernment and become free of old shackles.
It can be done.
Have a good week,
Amina | Transformational Coach and Consultant Want to get clear on what you want, address your fears and be inspired to live from passion and possibility? Request an introductory coaching conversation.
