“Nobody wants to read your stuff.” “You aren’t good enough to write in the big leagues.” “You’re writing isn’t smart or funny enough.” “You should go back to your day job and forget about inspiring the world with your writing.”
How to Silence Your Inner Critic
There’s a way out of that box we lock ourselves in! Through therapy, bodywork and alternative healing techniques I’ve begun to kick ass on the voices and break through to something way more joyful, inspiring and helpful.
We all need assistance when it comes to the inner critic. We all have an inner wisdom and healer to rely on. How are you doing when it comes to your inner critic?
People who’ve experienced severe trauma need more intensive therapy to help them reintegrate mind body and soul and feel whole again. When the stuff of life rips you apart, the voices take over and drown out your inner wisdom. Getting help to hear your intuition, inner wisdom, and healer and transform the doubt, pain, fear and shame is necessary.
10 Proven Ways to Win the Fight Against Inner Critic and Connect With Your Inner Wisdom
1. Secret Sauce to Practicing Awareness
Learn what it means to be an observer of your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and emotions. It will positively affect everything else that you do. The most influential authors on this subject include Eckhart Tolle, Anthony DeMello, Gay Hendricks, Laura Munson, Michael Singer, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Brene Brown, Thich Nat Hahn, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Byron Katie and Rhonda Byrne.
You will get busy learning. Make it your lifelong study. In the mean time practice watching yourself like a hawk, unattached to what you observe. Feel what happens when you take a step back and look at your own feelings, reactions, and emotions.
2. Scale-Up Your Awareness Skills
As you learn about awareness you’ll be creating a discipline of it. Mastering the inner critic will require this level of practice. Read more books. Take a class. Talk to your friends about it. See how it’s going with other people. Hire a coach to help you. This will be what turns your life into a series of Aha moments.
3. You Name It!
Name your inner critic. One of my favorite authors and retreat leaders, Laura Munson, gave me this tip. I named my voice Martha. You can give your inner critic a real name of a person from your past, or a fake one. Either way, naming her separates her from you. This will forever change the way you relate to her and it helps empower you.
4. Sharing The Voice
Talk about the inner critic with the friends you trust and enjoy having “those” kinds of conversations with. One of the biggest problems with the inner critic – it stays quiet, hidden and unexpressed.Call that voice out by sharing her messages out loud. You’ll hear how mean and ridiculous they sound and they’ll begin to have less power over you.
5. Talk to Your Inner Critic
You can talk directly to your inner critic. Once you’ve named her you can have a conversation. I talk to mine like she is that three-year-old little girl and pour on the love. “Listen, I know you are trying to help me. I hear you. I love you. But I got this.” Talking to her means you separate from the voice. You are using your awareness to recognize she isn’t you and that will allow you to think, believe and respond differently.
6. Do Your Healing Work
If your inner critic controls your life then you have some things to heal. If you experience more dread, doubt, fear and shame than joy and love, then you have an opportunity for healing. Get help.
Seek out a skilled therapist, an experienced healer, a coach or guide to help you get to the stuff that’s keeping you from experiencing joy. There is always a way! Part of the challenge in the fight against your inner critic is to not give up. Take on the spirit of a warrior and work toward healing. Be brave.
7. Learn the Language of Your Intuition
Through your practice of awareness, you’ll be learning the difference between your inner critic and your inner wisdom or intuition. Intuition speaks a different language, and that language is a little different in every person. Practice learning how your body gives you those messages. Do this by getting still. Learn meditation. My favorite teacher on this subject is Adyashanti. His book, True Meditation helped me start a practice and really enjoy it. He helped me see that every moment is an opportunity to meditate and that it didn’t require me sitting on a pillow for an hour every day – although I highly recommend that.
8. Practice Speaking the Language of Your Intuition
As you get to know the language of your intuition you’re going to have to practice listening and speaking it. It’s all about awareness. Now that you understand more about the messages your body is giving you, start learning what they mean and what to do with them. The process of journaling has helped me a lot. By writing about my thoughts, feelings and emotions, I get insights and answers. Writing has been a direct link to my intuition. Others use artwork, or music, meditation or breathing.
Find the way that gives you the best path to your soul.
9. Prioritize Yourself and Your Practice
To heal the world, you must start with yourself. Fill your own cup first. Learn how to say no. Learn regular self-care. Love yourself. Know your worth. Then and only then will you be able to give from your overflow rather than your reserves. When you prioritize yourself you honor your inner wisdom. She likes that and her voice will get louder the more you listen to her.
10. Find What You Love
The inner critic will get louder as you fight this fight, but it almost certainly starts to die down when passion, joy, bliss, and love start driving your bus. So find what you love. Do more of it, any way you can, any amount of time you can find. Let passion and inspiration be your focus as much as possible. You’ll start to recognize, call out and drown out your inner critic more and more as what you love becomes how you shine your light and make your mark in the world.