Why Are We So Hard On Ourselves? Your Inner Critic Is Lying To You!

This video is for guys who deal with self-criticism, a strong inner critic. And I wanna share, you have some common humanity here, so I'm gonna name off some things I experience when it comes to inner criticism. And you can nod your head this way if it's you. Okay, so for me, it's like a voice comes in and it'll poke holes in every story. And it knows where to poke, too. Okay, it knows where I'm sensitive and insecure and it'll get there. And for me, it's no matter what I've accomplished, no matter how productive I am, no matter if I check off every box on my to-do list that day, it's not satisfied. And there's a guilt when I rest. There's a guilt that I shouldn't be resting, that I shouldn't be doing more, that there's way more to accomplish, way more to achieve, way more to get done. And to have that resting place within me has taken some time to cultivate and work on, to actually learn to rest. Because, I don't know about you, but I've been working since I was eight years old, delivering papers with my brother, starting our own lawn cutting company around the neighborhood. And then working at Best Buy at the same time and doing factory work and all this kind of stuff. So work and doing things and accomplishing and getting things done is probably in your psyche, too. You're probably molded by productivity. And let me tell you some good things before we get to two specific exercises. We have to see if we're on the same page here or else this isn't gonna work and you can shut me off. The inner critic, probably for both of us, got us where we are today. It kept you motivated. It produced a fire under your ass to get you moving. It helped you protect yourself and survive in difficult times because it kept you pushing. It kept you moving, all right? All good qualities. And your work ethic is such that criticism has helped you perform. But notice how that's out of a state of lack and fear. That, you know, I'm fearful that I won't have the life, I'm fearful that I'm gonna regret parts of my life so I'm gonna do everything and I'm gonna take a bite of every little piece of food at the buffet so I know that I'm not missing out, mm-hmm, okay? So fear is that I fear that I won't be accepted so I have to people please. I fear that I won't be loved so I have to make sure I'm giving everybody else what they need and not giving myself what I need because I'm 37 years old and maybe you're thinking, I don't even know what I need half the time. I don't know how to treat myself well. Inner criticism and that voice that punishes you and puts you down and makes you feel like you're not enough might be so common and so familiar for you, you believe it's the only one, but it's not. It's not the only voice, it's just conditioning. It's all things like practice, right? If I had my guitar here, you know, the first time I tried a G chord, I was like, what is this claw that I have? Like, what is this hand doing? And then after weeks and months, it happens faster than you know it, your skillset begins to grow. So inner criticism for you has been well practiced and you're really good at it. Congratulations. Yeah, me too, I was very good at it too. That the moment I fall short, I have high expectations for myself and the moment I fall short, I'm a **** up. Mm. And the good news for you is you have high expectations and you wanna do really well and you wanna live a great life. Let's keep that there. Okay, we're 99% of the way there. These are good things. These are really good things. And my job and my work and my passion, guys, is to help you just go a little more, like a few more percent, just a few more percent, to quiet that inner critic and to increase this sense of inner guidance, let's call it. Okay, there's a free guide below if you wanna check it out. The inner critic versus inner guidance. Now already for guys, inner guidance sounds cheesy and soft as ----. And I get it. It's like, that's why I avoid using even the word self-compassion because guys automatically think it's so weak. Mm-mm. No, that's another video. So the exercises that we're doing here is I wanna see what your inner guidance is like versus your inner critic. Let's do it. So I'm gonna wait here while you get a pen and a piece of paper. I don't want you using notes and ----. I don't want you on your phone. This works way better for the brain and prefrontal cortex and hippocampus with memory retrieval if you get a pen and a piece of paper to write down. We're going analog, baby. So I'm gonna wait for you here while you get that or just press pause or come back to me when you wanna do this exercise. But admit to yourself that if you pause me or shut me down now, you're never coming back. So just do it now, okay? That's the inner critic at work as well. Shut him off. You'll do it tomorrow. Don't worry about it. I don't believe him. Do it now. Okay, so if you paused, welcome back. What you're gonna do is think about something today, this week, this month, something that you, maybe you messed up, maybe you made a mistake. Maybe it was at work, you made a fool of yourself, you didn't do the right thing. You know, maybe it's something you struggle with and there was a bit of a relapse. Maybe you're trying to quit pornography or something and there was a relapse, anything like that. Write down how you spoke to yourself during and after that mess up. How is the inner critic involved there? So write out how you responded to yourself during that mistake and after that. So do that now. So it could have been, you know, I followed the habit like, I can't believe. I'm like, I can't believe I did that. After all these years of experience, I can't believe you did that, right? This is gonna set you back. You look like an idiot. You know, sometimes it's been years and years. Look at the timeline. How have you not learned already? This is, I'm so far behind in life right now and this made me feel worse. Everybody's doing better than me and this mistake made it even worse. Caught in a cycle, huh? Okay, so once you're done how your inner critic responded to you in that situation, in the next column here in the piece of paper, write it bigger too. Think about a best friend that you have. If you don't have any best friends, think about someone you admire. Maybe it's your parents. Maybe it's your brother or sister. Maybe it's a spiritual figure. Maybe it's Christ himself sitting next to you in a chair. So it's someone that knows you inside and out. They understand the complexity of the situation. They understand the emotions that go with it. They understand the uncertainty within you and the fight within you and everything you've been through up until this point. What would they say to you because of this mess up? During and after this mess up, while you were going through it and now after they see you beating yourself up, what would they say to you? Write it down. It could be something so easy like everybody makes mistakes, man. It could be, you know, my friends tend to ground me. It's like, you're blowing this way up, eh? You're blowing this out of proportion. It really wasn't a big deal. What about like, you'll get them next time. Two steps forward, one step back, big deal. It could be that this friend doesn't say a thing and just listens to you. See, keep writing these things of what they would say. And I don't know if you've seen the movie Step Brothers, but it seems like at one of the last scenes, it's the two brothers that hate each other and they're trying to hug and they're so awkward in trying to hug and they can barely grip each other and then they start to punch each other. And that's exactly how this can feel sometimes for guys because you never offer yourself this kind of voice. So if it feels uncomfortable, that's okay. So keep writing. Maybe the friend says, just take some rest. Maybe they notice you're really beating yourself up. Okay, now you just compare both columns. You compare and look at the inner critic and now look at how a friend would respond. Inner critic, inner guidance. Now listen to this. You, your friend didn't call you up right now and you told them the situation and you wrote down exactly what they said. That list, that column came from you. That's the awesome part. That came from you. That was not something somebody said to you just now. You created a concept, an image of a best friend. You had them there in your mind, what they would say, but those words came from a part of you. And that means just as alive as this inner criticism is, inner guidance, encouragement, care, wanting the best for you, and extreme support is in you as well. And all you need to do is strengthen this bad boy. So instead of the immediacy and our amygdala firing and immediately we go to inner criticism, self-blame, judgment, and shame because it's so big and familiar, we practice, okay, I see you. I'm coming back here. I'm coming back to self-love. I'm coming back to understanding. And this, my friend, the inner guidance is way more motivating than fear and fire in your ass because you get burnt out literally with fire up your anus. So you can switch to this part and this just takes practice, okay? So awesome work doing the first exercise. Second exercise may work for you, may not. Okay, it should have been the other way. I should have done this one first, but let's try it. Wherever you're sitting right now, and I feel it too, wherever you're sitting, whatever you're doing right now, on the count of three, I'm gonna say something and you're just gonna do what you do. Let your body respond to it. Three, two, one, stop trying. And I'll frame it another way if nothing happened. Stop trying to be somebody right now. There's nothing you have to be. There's nothing you have to do at this moment now. What if there is no performance yet to put on, no achievement to be had, no boxes to check of to-dos. In this state you're in right now, everything you feel, everything that you are is okay. Now I'm gonna ask you one more time. Drop it, stop trying, uh-huh. Now if something happened in your body there, if you felt a little deflation, in a good way, if you felt a pressure release, like maybe you just had the biggest fart. I was like, stop trying, you're like, oh, I've been holding in this thing all day, just blah, maybe your body just released. I find it too, guys, like I'll start a video and I'll be up here and I gotta be this guy that teaches other guys how to deal with self-criticism and I gotta be this intelligent dude that has something to say and I gotta put on a little bit of a persona. It happens with speaking too, if I give a presentation. And to catch yourself there and to say, you don't have to try so hard. The trying is what puts us in distress. The trying is what makes things so self-critical because we're all tense and we're all reactive to the world. Uh-huh, we're even reactive to the thoughts we have, yeah? Scott, you're an idiot. Oh, I can't believe I just thought that, what an idiot. Oh, what an idiot, I just thought that again. So we become so reactive. Stop trying for moments during the day and you can say that to yourself. Stop trying. When you're at the office, in the chair, stop trying. When you're in commute, maybe in the car, in the train, stop trying, just be. If either of these exercises helped you at all, I'd love to see you in the comments, but even more so, man, I would love to speak with you. So there's a few ways we can do that. There's a free guide in the pinned comment and description and it's called the 5-Minute Mental Reset for Men. And it goes into the difference between that inner criticism and inner guidance mechanism and how the autonomic nervous system is involved. There's not too much information for it to overload you because we have enough information today. But there's a five-minute audio practice there that I would love for you to try. And it'll make a massive difference in strengthening this one. This is what we want to do, remember? Inner guidance, encouragement, coach-like motivation. And when this grows, it just takes up more space and the inner critic just gets a little smaller. That's it, that's it. So download that guide and then I'll check in with you in a couple days via email and see how you liked it. As simple as that. And if you didn't like it, you won't hear from me again. You got nothing to lose except something terrible like the inner critic. You only have everything to gain, which is a real sense of calm and feeling self-assured. Like being assured in you. And that's when all the tension is released, you know? If you enjoyed these two exercises and you download that guide, I'm really looking forward to meeting you. That's one way to get in touch. The other way, there's another link where you can fill out a bit of a form and then see if it's appropriate for us to take this a step further if you want to continue this practice and to know a little bit more. All right, man. Awesome work. I'll see you in the next vid. Bye-bye.