The top 3 mistakes to avoid when trying to silence your inner critic

Self Salutation Newsletter

Greetings and Salutations!

In last week’s message about self-defeating thoughts, I told you about how challenging life was for me when I left the monastic life.

During that time I was filled with shame and remorse about so many things. Plus, navigating the outside world after 16 years of living as a monk was a monumental challenge.

Then, when I was at my lowest point, I got into a bike accident and broke my wrist!

I had surgery on my wrist and the scar that resulted became a focal point for my shame. Whenever I looked at it I would ask myself, when are you going to get it together?

Finally, one day I knew I had to make a change. This was no way to live.

I realized that if I was going to move forward and get myself unstuck in life, I had to make one massive change in the way I was relating to myself: I needed to become my own best friend.

It wasn’t easy though — far from it. I was awkward and stumbling, and the downward spiral didn’t stop for some time.

In addition, while I started to become more aware of my tendency to focus on the negatives in my life, I was habituated to making 3 massive mistakes that it took me a long time to discover and break free from—because they were so baked into my way of looking at myself and life.

I going to share those with you now and also show you how to avoid them.

The top 3 mistakes I made in fighting my inner critic

Mistake #1 - The habit of ignoring my good qualities

When I left the monastic life it was like I encountered a mountain of ways that I needed to change and grow.

Every new aspect of life from dating to getting a job to making friends in the outside world had challenges to it that exposed new shortcomings.

I was so caught up in analyzing my negative qualities—all the things I wanted to fix in myself—that I didn’t take the time to appreciate the things I liked about myself.

We give a name like the inner critic to this tendency we all have to focus on the negative—psychologists call it the negativity bias.

My inner critic had me focused on the negative and the result was also that I failed to notice the positive.

Focusing on the positive is just as important as learning how to manage the way you deal with the negative qualities that you struggle with.

Mistake #2 - The habit of minimizing my successes

This is a related issue but is worth its own consideration.

Our predisposition to focus on the negative keeps us focused on either past failures or future problems.

The result is that we hardly ever savor our successes.

Because I didn’t reach the moon with all my endeavors I never savored all the fences that I had at least cleared.

I had accomplished a lot of things during my time as a monk but I diminished them within my mind.

That tendency was fueled by an ethic of humility in that culture. Humility is a tricky virtue, I tell you! Many of us fall into shame in an attempt at humility.

The minimization of your successes is reinforced in our culture in powerful ways.

Have you ever noticed that when they interview someone who has just won a gold medal or a championship game they never fail to ask them, “What are you planning for next year?”

We just can’t let anybody savor a victory.

Mistake #3 - This is the biggest of them all - I based my worth on externals

This is a categorically different kind of mistake from the others. And counteracting it is also the ultimate death blow to the inner critic.

My inner critic told me I had to accomplish earth-shattering goals by the time I was thirty and then change the world by the time I turned forty.

Then I berated myself for not hitting those milestones.

It never occurred to me that my own worth might have already been established.

Think about it: Everybody can recognize the immeasurable value of an infant who has accomplished absolutely nothing in this world.

Yet we all run around fighting for a sense of worth as if we have none.

People of faith see that God loves all Her children equally. It’s a fiat accompli. Already decided.

Yet how many of us recognize that worth in ourselves?

This is the fodder for the critic. This is the vulnerability the critic exploits.

The solution to avoiding these mistakes

So what’s the solution to these three mistakes?

The essence of that solution is one that my readers will be familiar with: instead of being focused on changing ourselves, we need to focus on changing our relationship with ourselves.

When you focus your attention on your relationship with yourself you will begin to recognize the above challenges when they surface.

Anytime you find yourself in a negative headspace, rather than taking your thoughts and negative feelings at face value, you can ask yourself: is this the result of my inner critic at work?

And whenever you discover that critic working, you can treat yourself with the care you would show your best friend instead.

Because these habits are so deeply rooted—baked into our way of looking at life, as I said before—to change your relationship with yourself requires ironing these out over time.

That’s a high-level look at things but next week I’ll share more details about the process I recommend.

Before I let you go, however, I have an exciting announcement for anyone looking to silence their inner critic.

Announcing the upcoming 5-Day Challenge

If you’ve experienced the kinds of self-defeating thoughts I’ve been speaking about in my past couple of posts, and wondering if you’ll ever be able to overcome your inner critic, I’ve got just the thing for you.

Starting Wednesday, April 10th, I’m hosting a live FREE 5-Day Knockout Your Inner Critic challenge for you — so that you can gain freedom from this nag.

You’ll walk away with:

• A deeper sense of appreciation for yourself

• A healthy sense of pride in what you’ve accomplished

• A new sense of your true worth that doesn’t depend on externals

And you’ll also get a chance to win a few prizes! You didn’t see that coming, now did you?

You can sign up for this completely free and truly life-changing opportunity to empower yourself in the deepest ways possible with one simple click here:

Until next week…

Peace,

Simon