Ep 21 – Silencing the Inner critic

‘You are so stupid to think you can pull this through,’

‘Dear Lord you need to tone those hips,’

‘You are no public speaker,’ or

‘You have no hand-eye coordination.’

These voices are not only supercritical, but very stubborn, and unshakeable, rooted in past failures, the shadows of which we never seem to outrun no matter how many years go by.

I have had a lot of personal chatter too ever since I moved out of the corporate world. Constantly putting yourself in situations that are out of depth are not only uncomfortable but also they are downright challenging with the inner critic going on in your head saying, “What If I am not good enough?”

But as I have been progressing on my meditation journey, I started becoming more aware of it. I realized this can’t go on and somewhere about a month back, I decided to let this critic do its talk without affecting my actions. I put myself out there, challenged myself to create a podcast every single day, write on LinkedIn daily, and continuously go out of my comfort zone. There were the hard days, but you know what I realized – the more I acted against the warnings of the inner critic, the lesser power I gave to that voice. Because my actions were giving me solid proof that was contradicting to the negative inner critic’s chatter. And with every conflicting evidence, I invalidated more of these self-limiting beliefs.

Don’t believe everything you think

The one thing that internal chatter does is to hold you back from action, but it is action at the end of the day that eventually silences it.

So the next time you find yourself getting bogged down by this internal chatter, try to follow these things-

1- Pause and reflect whether it is still relevant or if it the past showing up? If so, add a ‘but’ to it. For instance, “I may have been nervous to speak in front of a large audience in the past, but I have not been this confident about the subject I am addressing before.”

2- Challenge it: Introspect on a few recent examples where that negative inner voice was proven wrong. Were you nervous and still gave a fabulous presentation at work? Were you exhausted but still worked out and felt good at the end of it?

Next time your inner critic begins to drive you down, catch yourself and hold back from going down that spiral.

3- Reflect and practice self-compassion as you look back at how much you’ve evolved. And remember to take action towards whatever change you want to see in your life – it could be big or small, but it will only happen if you go out there and do it.

And on that note, I sign off from the season 1 of Meraklis Mornings. It is definitely a routine I am going to miss, but I hope these bite-sized thoughts and perspectives left you feeling charged up, to take on the day with more energy and gave you the strength to back yourself up through life’s ups and downs.

If you like what you’re listening/reading, tune in to our other podcasts/blogs under the name Being Meraklis.