Maybe My Inner Critic Has a Point...???

So, what if your inner critic is sometimes accurate? What if it's sometimes, you know, has a point? Um, I want to address that because in my last video I mentioned that your inner critic is never right. It's always deeply misguided and not something that we should be listening to. We should be well listen to it actually, but listen to it so that we could uncover it and start to question it. But I had got a really great question from somebody. Ivana um posted a question and she says, "You say the inner critic is always wrong, but I'm not sure. For example, if I spend a week doing almost nothing, calling myself lazy feels like an honest reflection that I'm falling short of my own potential given my specific circumstances. So the problem is when that awareness slides into shame and paralysis. How do you draw the line between useful self-criticism that pushes us to act and destructive self-attack that just crushes us? So that's a great question and I wanted to make a reply video. There's a little bit of noise outside. There's a thunder and lightning storm here at the moment. So hopefully it won't be too loud. But in answering Ivana's question here, it's a great one because this is the issue with the the the inner critic, it's that we actually value it. We see it as probably a lot of the time having a point. So how do you draw the line? Now there is a genuine thing within all of us. We have these different energies within us. The feminine part which is very compassionate and forgiving and open. And then there's a masculine part within us that has standards, that wants to achieve things, that wants to do, take action. Both of those energies are complimentary and very healthy. However, the inner critic is a distorted version of those two things, particularly the masculine energy. But effectively, the inner critic is always wrong. How can I say it's always wrong? I'm going to really map it out here. It's always wrong because what it does is it relies upon judgment. Okay, that's the fundamental problem with the inner critic. It relies heavily on judgment. So for instance, it says in in your point you said doing almost nothing isn't great. You mentioned, right? I spent a week doing almost nothing. Now that's actually a judgment because the truth is I could say well you probably were doing quite a lot actually. You were probably relaxing. Um that's something you were doing a lot actually. So doing almost nothing is already a judgment. It's it's you see the problem with it really is that it's it takes away from reality or it embellishes reality. Actually it adds things to what are is is happening is legitimately happening that actually aren't helpful using judgments. I'm going to give you an alternative way to think about this in a moment. Firstly, I'm trying to point out the fact that the inner critic isn't reality based. It uses judgments. It embellishes the facts of what's happening. You mentioned laziness there in your in your point. Now, lazy is a story. Lazy is just a judgment. It's also a permanent one. It's basically notice that the inner critic said it doesn't really say I've been a little lazy today. Occasionally, I can be lazy. It's usually I'm lazy. Right? It's this permanent sort of label that we put on ourselves. So another person might again say that you're not being lazy, you're relaxing. Many successful, productive people spend a lot of time in relaxation. Is it lazy? I actually would see it as an essential part of the process of taking action and being productive. So falling short of my own potential was something you mentioned in the question. Again the problem there is that's a snapshot of time snapshot of your life. So the the relaxing you're doing is being viewed as not living up to potential. It's also predicting the future saying that this is what your future's going to be. Now the inner critic like none of us none of us can read the future. So falling short of my potential doesn't really hold up to much scrutiny. Now what can you do? So the the very legitimate part of this question is yeah okay I get that maybe maybe it is based in judgment but what do I do? Because I don't want to quit the denial about how I'm feeling here. Something isn't feeling good right now. So what we can do is we can make reality based I call them sort of reality based clinical descriptions of reality that aren't based in judgment. So for instance it might be I spend I spent nine hours watching movies and playing video games today that if that's what happened I doubt in Adana's case that's what happened but as an example I know I certainly did that at times I spent 9 hours watching movies and video games today. Now, if that's true, if I watched 9 hours of movies and played video games for 9 hours, that is not a judgment. That is just a literal clinical description of reality. That's helpful. You're allowed to acknowledge what's happening. Okay? But there's no lazy. There's no lack of potential story. There's no um judgment about it at all. It's just reality. So, you're allowed to not be in denial about what you're seeing. Okay? So, that's the first thing that's helpful. You can also say things to yourself like,"I feel conflicted about the amount of time I spent doing that because that's true. That is actually a reality based um statement. I do feel conflicted about the amount of time I spent doing that." So, we're not adding any judgments here. Another really helpful thing you can do is you can say instead of judgment, I wonder why I spent 9 hours of my time doing that. If it's a genuine curiosity, like we meet it with curiosity instead of judgment, I wonder why it happened. It's that's what happened. That's reality. And now I'm getting curious about it as opposed to using judgment about it. And really what that curiosity is going to do is it's going to reveal to you that rather than being lazy or someone who isn't living up to their potential or something like that is that there are very understandable blocks that are getting in the way of that action. So for instance, typical blocks would be our inability to give ourselves full permission to relax. That's a big one. So, okay, I'm all about taking the action, but when it comes to actually relaxing, I feel a little bit hesitant about it. I don't know if I deserve it. I actually haven't taken it seriously. I finally fall into relaxing as a default or as a as a reaction rather than having it as a prioritized um thing that I think is important, right? Scheduled. I'm not really taking my relaxation seriously. And then when I do it, I feel guilty about it. How do you take out the guilt out of relaxation? You sanction it. You plan it. You prioritize it. The biggest one of all of these blocks that you're going to find when you're in this reality based description of what's happening without the judgment of the inner critic is that you're going to realize that by far and away the biggest block, the real reason isn't that you're lazy or you're not living up to your potential. By far and away, the biggest reason is that you're feeling overwhelmed because the inner critic actually in the in the uh behind the scenes is the thing that's telling you you have to do 17 different things today. So, the inner critic establishes what needs to be done and then criticizes you for not doing it because you're lazy or you're not living up to your potential when really the real reason you weren't actually able to take action was you were completely overwhelmed by the inner critic in the first place. This is why we need to be curious. Okay. So, it's like insight is what's required here. Not judgment. Insight, understanding, slowing down, figuring things out. Another uh quite common one, less much less common than overwhelm is this idea that the inner critic also suggests is that when you sit down to do some work or something that you're not allowed to struggle that every time you sit down to do some work on something that it must be perfect and you must make great progress with it. That puts enormous pressure on you and it will create a resistance in you to taking action. So Ivana and everybody else is watching this, I get your point. It's like, yeah, but this inner critic, I mean, I watched I was pretty lazy, right? Maybe it has a point. I'm not telling you to disregard it and leave you with nothing. I'm saying disregard the inner critic and replace it with something, right? and what you replace it with. You still have a way to not be in denial and to take action and to address issues, but you do it in reality based clinical clinical descriptions of reality. There's no need to add the judgments to things for you to identify things that you'd like to work on or action steps that you need to take. But without the inner critic, without the lack of judgment, what you'll find are actual genuine insights that come from real curiosity about why you're doing it. And again, the main one, and I must have said it a 100 times on YouTube, the biggest reason that we're not taking action is that we're overwhelmed. And that overwhelm is coming from this this huge list of tasks that we feel are uh essential things that we must do. So, hope that's a useful video, Ivana. I hope that answers your question. And anyone else who uh I think we all have that question at some point, which is my inner critic actually probably sounds pretty reasonable. has a point. Actually, not really. It's actually not that helpful. Our problem is that we believe it. We think it is helpful. We think it's going to give us a strategy. But really, calling yourself lazy, what is that going to do for you? Don't be lazy. Do we even understand what the word means? Ask 50 different people. They'll all give you a different description of what it means. So, it's not going to be that insightful for us or useful, but we can get curious as to the typical blocks as to why we struggle. So, hope that's useful video, Ivana. If you're curious about my approach to overcoming procrastination and taking action, you can get my book um procrastination decoded. I also have a video course available on this issue and you can reach out to me for one-to-one work as well. I really hope that's helpful and insightful. Take care of yourselves and I will see you very soon. Bye-bye. [Music] [Applause]