worked by now. What will work is to institute the kind of thinking that is the polar opposite of how the Inner Critic operates. To start creating profound and meaningful change, we are going to become aware of the Inner Critic’s thoughts and the feelings that accompany those thoughts. We will look at them impartially, practice self-kindness, show ourselves compassion, and then choose to think and feel something different.
The absolute very first step is to not beat yourself up for having inner critical thoughts. There’s nothing wrong with you for having an Inner Critic! It’s part of the human condition. Remember, the Inner Critic is a mental protection response that we all have. None of us asked for those situations in which some scathing criticism came out of nowhere. None of us consciously opted to take on the opinions, fears, and mistaken beliefs of the people we looked up to. If you had learned differently, then naturally, you would do differently. Seriously, don’t beat yourself up. There’s no need to be self-critical about being self-critical. And besides, those days are about to become a thing of the past.
The next step is to acknowledge that you may be nervous about this process. The idea of changing this way of thinking that you’ve had for so long may make you apprehensive. You may be thinking, “Aren’t the self-critical messages what keep me motivated and able to achieve? Doesn’t the modified behavior that self-critical thoughts encourage prevent the threat of future criticism from coming to me?” Here’s the thing: The longer we listen to the messages, the more we forget who we are and the importance of what we have given up. The more we forget our home, and the farther we wander from our best friend and source of personal power. We lose touch with just how creative we truly are.
I will say this many times throughout this book: we’re not our inner critical thoughts. We are so, so much more. Inner critical thoughts hold us back from the prospect of fully realizing our greatness, our ability to feed our souls and contribute to the greater good.
Through the Creative Doses, we’ll cultivate a talent for noticing when inner critical thoughts appear or when our behavior is indicative of self-judgment, criticism, or doubt. We’ll become gifted in our new capacity to recognize and then soothe feelings of distress when they appear. The ability to choose one thought over another will become our superpower. We will become experts at giving ourselves the very thing that the Inner Critic been trying to create for us all of this time – a sense of safety and reassurance – through applying two powerful tools.
Allow me to introduce you to the practices that are the bedrock of this process and that are at the heart of our journey of transformation: mindfulness and self-compassion. Let’s learn what makes these two approaches so incredibly effective in our efforts to banish the Inner Critic, and then practice them with our first Creative Doses.
Become Full of Mind
“The gift of mindfulness, then, is that by accepting the present moment you are better able to shape your future moments with wisdom and clarity.”
— Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind
Let’s be real: having a full-blown Inner Critic episode can be pretty awful. You feel vulnerable and unsure of yourself. (Even if it’s just under the surface, it’s still there.) Despite feeling as though a giant hole is about to suck you down to one of the nine levels of the Inferno, outwardly you not only need to appear as if nothing is wrong, but you’re also somehow still supposed to produce. Yikes!
The Inner Critic encourages something that Kristin Neff, the author of the book Self Compassion calls “over-identification,” which is “being so carried away by our personal drama that we can’t clearly see what is occurring in the present moment.”19 In the midst of over-identifying, it’s nearly impossible to realize that your self-critical thoughts are not an accurate reflection of reality. We’re so used to being caught up in our ingrained self-critical stories the Inner Critic is telling us that we can’t see they are just that: stories.
But without a tool to use or practice to put into place, gaining perspective is easier said than done. We need an approach that acts as a counterbalance, a methodology that will get us out of our internally focused self-critical thought loop, providing the mental distance to not only see the situation and ourselves clearly, but also perspective so that we can make better choices about where to direct our attention and place our focus. And in particular, we need a way to respond more evenly to the times our Inner Critic rears up and self-critical thoughts paralyze us, leaving us feeling vulnerable and defensive. Enter mindfulness.
What is mindfulness? It’s the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, while not being overly reactive to or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us. It’s a form of meta-awareness: being aware of being aware. Imagine standing outside of your own mind, observing your thoughts and feeling as if they were happening to someone else. You’re fully aware but impartial, and therefore not caught up in the story that your mind (or Inner Critic) is spinning about the situation. This is being mindful.
In terms of disrupting our inner critical thoughts, mindfulness is an ideal tool. When we are mindful, we clearly see and accept what is happening in the present moment without reacting with judgment, reflection, or internal commentary.20 Mindfulness gives us the opportunity to respond rather than just react, and we can move to a place of more balanced and clear thinking. From this place of more balanced and clear thinking, we can acknowledge self-critical thoughts objectively. What’s more, regularly practicing mindfulness positively transforms the emotional mind by establishing emotional balance21 and raising our baseline level of happiness.22
Because mindfulness is about attention and focus, it plays well with neuroplasticity. Being mindfully aware of the Inner Critic helps us focus our attention on other thoughts. Then intentionally redirecting attention and focus will decrease the activity of our self-critical thought circuits, so they will eventually be pruned away, eventually altering our brain circuitry for the better. To start banishing the Inner Critic, mindfulness fits our needs perfectly.
Typically, when we want to change something, we think that it involves force and effort. Your inclination may be to try to alter your behavior by actively working to “change” your self-critical thoughts: to tell yourself, “Stop thinking that way!” and then reprimand yourself when you think those thoughts again anyway. Sound familiar? Thankfully, mindfulness is the opposite of that.
The best thing about starting to practice mindfulness is that it’s not about making yourself do something. It is more about acceptance and shifting focus. In a lot of ways, it’s about giving yourself permission to just sit and look at things without having to think about, process, analyze, react, or respond to them. Doesn’t that sound like a refreshing change? It’s like giving your brain a vacation!
In using mindfulness to see the Inner Critic’s messages as an outcome of it trying to protect you, you can begin to be more impartial. Even more importantly, you begin to instill the practice of not reacting to self-critical thoughts by instead realizing that these thoughts are merely a habitual reaction to a stimulus. Ultimately, you don’t have to believe what your Inner Critic is spouting, which gives its messages less weight and validity.
Here’s the best part: mindfulness is something we all naturally already possess! However, it’s more readily available when we practice it on a daily basis, and gets stronger by exercising it regularly. As it is one of the core practices of our work, let’s start building our “mindfulness muscles” right now.
Purpose: To learn to accept thoughts instead of reacting to them
Instead of believing everything that passes through your mind, practice observing
