You're listening to the Overthinker's Guide to Joy, episode 14. This is the one
about your inner critic. Let's dive in. Hey there,
you are listening to the Overthinker's Guide to Joy. This is a podcast for
overthinkers, overachievers, perfectionists, type A, stressed out,
anxious people who just want to calm down and feel better. I'm your host,
Certified Life Coach Jackie de Crinis.
Hey there and welcome back. So as you may have noticed, I tend to record my
podcasts in series. The first group was based on my four essential daily habits for
good mental and physical hygiene, what I refer to as the homework series. And then
I did my power series, and these are the additional daily habits that help manage
my mind and the typical mind of an overthinker. And these are the power of
journaling, taking a pause, routine, decluttering, gratitude, forgiveness,
and curiosity. All things anyone can do at any given time to harness their power
back and to take control of their overthinking brain. But the last few episodes have
been focused on the unconscious habits that cause self -sabotage.
And this is perfectionism, not being a virtue, control, being an illusion.
And this week, I'm gonna talk about your inner critic, not being your friend. I
consider perfectionism and control and or inner critic, kind of like three ugly
triplets, co -mingled, co -habitating, co -dependent. They always go together.
So I first became acquainted with my inner critic when I was an executive in
television and I was given my first executive coach. And while I was very confident
in having the top creative job at the network where I worked, oddly as I became
higher up the food chain, I became more insecure about what I didn't know.
Things like budgets and finance and ratings and marketing and kind of all the things
that go into making a successful television network that I frankly never had to
really think about because my entire focus for 20 plus years was just on the
creative, buying and developing and overseeing the ideas. And so somebody else always
managed the finances and the marketing and the ratings and I just had to do my
job. And now that I was sitting in a much higher level seat, I really needed to
have an overview of everything. And I found myself sort of intimidated by what I
didn't know. So my coach at the time asked me, well, Why are you afraid to speak
up if you have so much confidence in one area? Why are you so afraid to speak up
in other areas? And it was really the fear of overstepping my boundaries and
admitting that I didn't know something or what I was really afraid of was screwing
up now that I was working in a much higher level playing field.
So she was the one who educated me on that voice that I was hearing in my head,
the one that kept me from asking a lot of key questions or speaking my mind or
trusting my instincts that I would learn it as I went and not being so afraid to
make mistakes, she said, "That's your inner critic." And the question is, where did
he or she come from? And I had to sort of delve into that,
like where did that voice come from? Where did that inner critic come from? And
some people know right away who their inner critic is and some people don't. I just
never had heard the phrase. But it's powerful when you can identify your inner
critic because your inner critic is most likely where we have most of our limiting
beliefs. That is the stories we tell ourselves about why we can't do something or
why we can't say something. Things like, well, that's not my area of expertise,
or I might screw that up, or someone might know more than I do and I'll look like
an idiot, or God forbid I might be wrong. This is where doubt and fear come from,
your inner critic. The one who tells you you're not good enough. You're not educated
enough. You aren't pretty enough. You aren't smart enough. You haven't paid your
dues. You already have more than most people. You should be grateful for what you
have. You should never ask for more because you might lose everything. Yep.
So that's where my mind went. So where did my inner critic come from? It turns out
it came from my maternal grandmother. My maternal grandmother was an immigrant from
Russia at the turn of the 20th century and She came to this country as one of 13
children quite poor Relatively uneducated although her father was educated.
He was a scholar her mother died when she was little And she didn't know English,
and she spoke with a heavy accent, and she was trying to figure out how to
navigate her life in 1912 in America as a Russian immigrant.
So she had many hardships, not just losing her mother and, like most immigrants,
learning a new language and assimilating into a new culture.
But when she got married and had two children, she developed breast cancer in the
1940s. And her husband left her once he found out she had cancer.
He was afraid. He was afraid she was sick. He was afraid she was going to die.
And he left her with two teenage girls. So she had to go live with her sister in
a different state and figure out how to make her own living and how to raise her
children by herself. They ultimately reconciled and lived a long life together,
but it was a terrible betrayal at a key point in her life. And then later,
my grandfather developed a gambling problem. And so they lost their entire life
savings due to gambling, which she had to go back to work late in life again and
rebuild that nest egg, which she did. But she looked at the world as a difficult
place and she was completely self -educated and self -taught. She was very bright.
She was very shrewd. She was a great investor in the stock market. She was a good
saver. She was really an intellect and she was a devout advocate for women's rights,
everything from voting to equal rights and She was kind of amazing but she was
tough and she was particularly tough on me and So she was kind of the first to
always say to me or to remind me how lucky I was to be born when I was and to
be born where I was and She felt like I shouldn't ask for more than I had.
She thought it was extraordinary that I got to go to college. She thought it was
extraordinary that I got to work and become an executive. And her attitude was,
you know, you should never ask for a raise. You should never ask for a promotion.
You should just keep your head down and work hard and be grateful for everything
you have. So there's some good advice in that, but it was also a very narrow lens
in which she saw the world and how she saw women in the world. And even though
she was an advocate for equal rights and even though she was an advocate for women
in the workplace, she also felt that women had to play it relatively small and stay
grateful and be humble and not rock the boat. So when I am experiencing periods of
doubt, my grandmother comes up as my inner critic. So how do we overcome our inner
critic? How do we not let our inner critic run the show and keep us down?
Well, there's a number of ways. The first thing is to give your inner critic a
name. And you don't wanna call it, if your mother was your inner critic, or your
father was your inner critic, or your grandmother was your inner critic. I don't
recommend giving them the literal name of the person who either criticized you or
judged you when you were little, and that's the voice you hear as an adult. I
recommend creating kind of a different avatar, but with the same sort of sensibility.
So my inner critic, as coached out of me by my executive coach,
I named Ursula. And Ursula is the sea witch from the Little Mermaid.
And for those of you who don't have children or have never seen the Little Mermaid,
Ursula is this great big octopus who lives under the sea. And she's kind of
beautiful and bold and has this gravelly voice. and she's trying to steal the little
mermaid's voice. The little mermaid has this beautiful singing voice and the one
thing Ursula doesn't have is a beautiful singing voice. And so she steals the little
mermaid's voice in exchange for legs so that the little mermaid can leave her tail
in the ocean and go walk on land to meet her prince charming. And so it's a
Faustian bargain, but the idea is that Ursula stole her voice.
And so when I feel like I'm not speaking up for myself or not negotiating for
myself, or I have held myself back for fear of failure or judgment or criticism,
I think about Ursula stealing my voice. So Ursula is my avatar for my inner critic
And learning to name it and give it a visual and talk back to it are all really
powerful ways to quell your inner critic. But some other suggestions have been made,
which is to meditate, to become more mindful of your inner critic as a way to calm
your brain down and recognize that that inner voice may not be useful.
And as I said, another thing is to create a silly character to imagine as your
inner critic. So mine is Ursula. Another one is to stop comparing yourself to
others. People are gonna be better than you. There's always gonna be better people
at singing, dancing, math, making more money, being more famous, being more popular,
it doesn't matter. Everybody operates in their own lane and comparison is sort of
the best way to give power to your inner critic and kind of the worst way to
diminish your own power. The fourth is to practice self -compassion.
Be kind to yourself. When you see the inner or hear the inner critic rising up,
simply say I see you, and you're not useful to me right now.
The fifth is to start a daily self gratitude journal habit, which we've talked about
in previous podcasts, both the practice of gratitude and also the practice of
journaling. This is simply just combining the two. But what are five ways to turn
the negative self talk into productive self -talk. Again,
five different ways. One, recognize the negative thought. And look for evidence if
your thought is true.
But then look for evidence that your thought isn't true. Refrain your thought into
something more realistic. And five, Ask yourself how bad it would be,
even if it were true.
So I'm gonna just recap those 10 different ways to talk to your inner critic. The
first five is to meditate, create a silly character to imagine as your inner critic,
stop comparing yourself to others, practice self -compassion, start a daily self
-gratitude journaling habit. The next five are to recognize your negative thought,
look for evidence to make sure it's true, look for evidence to make sure it isn't
true, reframe your thought into something more realistic and ask yourself how bad it
would be if your thought were true. But letting your inner critic run the show can
be a lifetime of limiting yourself from your full potential. Your full potential of
finding love your full potential of earning the most money you could earn Your full
potential for being happy your full potential to achieve greater success Whether it's
athletically whether it's emotionally whether it's personally But your inner critic is
an old story. It's something that came from your past It's someone who got in your
head and told you you were doing things wrong, or told you you were acting too big
for your britches, or told you to stay in your lane in your place and play small,
stay small, and really facing that inner critic and talking back to it and
recognizing that your or critic may have been playing through their own lens,
kind of like my grandmother, who was really smart and really powerful and had a lot
to share and a lot to teach. But she had come from many,
many decades of tragedy and disappointment and hurt. And so she was projecting upon
me her own loss of death, of divorce, of illness,
of losing everything, of having to rebuild everything. And so she wanted to make
sure that I didn't step out of my lane, that I didn't step over my gratitude and
that I didn't get too big. But that harmed me because it made me play small when
oftentimes I shouldn't have,
and it disempowered me to believing what I was truly capable of.
So for those of you listening to the podcast today who have a very strong inner
critic who dictates a lot of your life or maybe unconsciously plays a role in
preventing you from what you really want to achieve, I invite you to talk back to
that inner critic. Give him or her a name, give him or her an avatar or a silly
character. Visualize them, refer to them by name, and tell them they no longer serve
a purpose in your life. You get to shed your inner critic whenever you're ready to
do so, whenever you're ready to take your career,
your love life, your financial situation, or just your happiness to the next level.
It starts with shedding your inner critic.
So Ursula and I are going to say goodbye for now. And by the way,
just even in recording this podcast today, I can't tell you how noisy Ursula was
before I got on this microphone and started recording. She had all kinds of comments
about how I was in no position to talk about inner critics and I didn't know what
I was saying and really what was I gonna say and how was it gonna be helpful to
other people and you know what? I told Ursula to go have a seat in the corner and
shut up and I turned on the microphone and I wrote the podcast and you have it
today. So buh -bye Ursula and buh -bye to your inner critic,
at least for today and maybe for tomorrow and hopefully every day thereafter.
Have a great week. Thanks for listening. Shut down that inner critic and go do some
awesome stuff. If you want to learn more tips about managing your stress and how to
manage your overthinking brain, just go to my website and sign up for my weekly
newsletter at jackiedecrinis.com. That's J -A -C -K -I -E -D -E -C -R -I -N -I -S dot com.
You can also follow me on Instagram at jackiedecrinis. Bye for now. Thank you for
listening to this episode of Overthinker's Guide to Joy. If you like what was
offered in today's episode, I would love you to leave a review and subscribe or
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