The Inner Critic: Listen Up
Today’s post is by guest author Greg Angriella, who writes about why your inner critic may have something valuable to tell you. In the process of personal transformation, we seek to be open to what our minds, as well as our bodies, are telling us, even if we don’t want to hear.
The inner critic gets a bad rap ever time. “Silence your inner critic!”, “Avoid the inner critic, it will sabotage your best efforts,” or “Your inner critic is your worst enemy”, are common wisdom we often hear about this negative voice inside. However instead of running from this negative voice inside, perhaps we might slow down and take a good look at it. We might be very surprised at what we discover.
Facing our Demons Head On
This is like facing our demons in our dreams. If you are having a recurring nightmare where something big, bad and ugly is chasing you, the advice is to turn around and face it, head on, eye to eye. Suddenly the demon stops being a demon, you realize that it’s simply something that has been trying to get your attention. You have been so dedicated to avoiding it that it grew and and got stronger and eventually took the form of a demon hunting you down.
It’s the same with any negative energy in our life. If we take the approach of simply shutting it off and avoiding it, we may set ourselves up for trouble later on.
What is your inner critic trying to tell you? If you stop and listen you can find out. There is a message buried beneath the negativity. It’s not all bad, there is something wise coming from the depths. You just need to see through the blindness of the negativity to see the jewel of wisdom shining beneath.
The Wisdom You are Missing
For example let’s say you want to start a blog, but whenever you begin you run into the self sabotaging thought, “I can’t write, nobody will read my blog posts…” When this happens, you hate yourself for having the negative thought, so you react with, “Darn, why am I so negative!!!” You blame yourself for your negative thinking, but you never really get down to the heart of the matter, which is to listen to the negative thought and see why it is there.
Perhaps you are right, perhaps writing is not your thing at all, and it would be wise to move on and find what it is you really want to do. Or perhaps you are a great writer but you’ve settled on a topic you don’t really know anything about, and you simply need to look more carefully at your choice of topic. Or maybe you are a brilliant writer after all, and this blog idea has been your way of avoiding the challenge of writing that best seller.
But meanwhile, you have been so dedicated to silencing your inner critic that you didn’t take the time to discover what is actually going on inside of you. So the next time you hear a voice inside screaming, “You can’t do that!!!”, slow down and listen to why that voice is there. You might be amazed at what you will learn.
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Your companion on the journey to transformation,
Ted Moreno
Hi Ted A Moreno,
This question may be a little off-topic, Let’s talk about the inner critic. We all have one. That little voice inside that stops us from taking risks, that finds the faults in every plan, that finds something to criticize us about, even on our best day. I ran in to mine this week, probably because I was having too much fun. Whenever life is good and I am really enjoying it, that pesky voice starts up. Inevitably, before long, that voice has slammed my self-esteem and brought clouds into my sunny day. The inner critic is a chameleon, changing forms and shapes so it’s hard to spot it. Perhaps your inner critic has become so loud that you are actually outwardly critical of others and terribly critical of yourself. As you read this, you may hear your own inner critic, who will either be denying every sentence (“Oh no, I am so OVER that!”) or using it as ammunition (“See, one MORE thing to work on…I am NEVER going to get it together!). Stay with me till the end, and you will have some tools to disarm and transform the inner critic.
Regards
What you resist, persists. Hear what that critic has to say then decide if it is valuable or not.
Well said Kyle, much shorter and to the point than my long winded meandering!!
I have said this for years without the negative and positive helping us along there would be no great inventions or technology as it is today The universal balance is equal measures of both. The same with our thinking process. rb
Thanks for your comment Rebecca!