How to Stop Listening to Your Inner Critic – It’s Your #1 Enemy
Your Inner Critic Can Destroy You – It’s Time to Stop Listening!
Your inner critic creates powerful self-doubt that can rob you of happiness. It is relentless and won’t stop until you stop it.
- You aren’t good enough — smart enough — pretty enough.
- Why did you take this job? You have no idea what you are doing.
- Everyone knows what an idiot you are.
- You’ll never amount to anything
You must stop listening to that relentless voice!
Face Down Your Enemy
The inner critic in your head prevents you from being who you are meant to be because it fills you with powerful self-doubt that can destroy your life.
It chips away at your self-confidence, which creates the belief that you can’t do anything well. Success and happiness begin to feel out of reach.
It is time to say, “Stop! I’m no longer listening! Enough is enough.”
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Always Keep in Mind – It’s All Lies
The whispering voice in your head is so convincing it’s easy to believe it’s speaking the truth.
The words feel true. So much so, they are difficult to deny.
The terrible thoughts keep repeating over and over until your confidence falters. You make a mistake or don’t reach a goal and you tell yourself, “I knew it. I am a failure. Why did I even try?”
As your confidence weakens, you make another mistake and you become convinced you are doomed. You know for certain that “never measuring up” is your lot in life.
Self-doubt is devious and subtle. It gains strength over time.
But . . . it’s all lies. Those terrible messages that are filling your mind with self-doubt are all coming from fear! They have nothing to do with the real you.
Five Ways You Can Lose the Battle
If you keep listening and believing the lies, self-defeating behaviors like the ones listed below will keep you from living your best life.
1. Believing the Lies
You accept the whispers as truth — you are not good enough — not capable enough — not smart enough— not enough….. PERIOD. You begin behaving as if it were so.
You must fight back. Hit the mute button and shut it down.
You are enough, you always have been — and you always will be!
Everyone makes mistakes. It’s part of life. No one hits the mark every time. That is how you learn, which makes you stronger.
2. Opting Out
You go into hiding convinced that if you don’t try, you can’t fail. It feels safer and less hurtful than the alternative.
You may be right, but the magic moments of life cannot happen if you are hiding out to protect yourself from the possibility of failure.
Failure is not the end of the world. Challenge your fears and go for it.
Start with small goals and celebrate the wins. Play them back over and over in your head so you get familiar with the good feelings — and want more. Build your confidence a little at a time.
As your confidence builds, you become tougher and more resilient. When you have to deal with a failure, it isn’t a disaster. You pick yourself up and start again.
No more hiding out.
3. Comparing Yourself to Others
There will always be others who can do some things better than you. Making comparisons is dangerous because it prevents you from seeing your greatness.
Every individual is unique and inherently different from every other person in the world – that includes you, which means you have a different perspective on life, different values, opinions, and desires. You are who you are with your face, shape, size, personality, talents, and abilities.
If you are constantly comparing yourself to others, you will never be happy or discover your authentic self.
Rather than help you, comparisons hold you back from becoming the best YOU possible. You lose your real self in the process
If you want to be happy and free to succeed, comparisons must be outlawed.
4. Feeding the Doubt
If you are constantly trying to measure up to a superficial standard of beauty perpetuated by the media, you will always fall short and be in pain.
Those images are not realistic standards. The photos are airbrushed and photoshopped, plus the models starve themselves to stay thin.
If you reject the way you look because you don’t measure up to media projections of the perfect woman, you will have a warped sense of self, which is based on nonsense.
Rather than buy into artificial ideals perpetuated by popular culture — learn to love yourself exactly as you are. Always focus on your innate beauty. Every woman carries a unique beauty that should be embraced and accepted without question.
Accepting yourself completely exactly as you are – the whole package, with all your strengths and weaknesses, is the only way to develop a high level of self-confidence.
When you believe in yourself and love who you are, you don’t have to convince anyone else to feel the same way about you, it will happen naturally.
5. Giving Others Power
What others think of you is none of your business.
People offer their opinions whether anyone wants to hear them, or not. When your self-confidence is wobbly, you are vulnerable to what others say about you.
If your feeling of self-worth must be validated by the approval of others, you are valuing their opinions more than your own. The real you will get lost in the noise.
I guarantee others DO NOT have your best interests at heart. It is a sad fact of life, but people only care about themselves.
It’s your life and you have the right and responsibility to be yourself and live life as you choose.
Real Power Lies Within
Trust yourself and use that trust to filter others’ thoughts and ideas regarding the person you are. It’s okay to reject their opinions and to believe in your greatness.
Trusting in your wisdom takes strength and courage. Be strong — don’t let other voices override your own.
Live in the NOW as You Look to the Future
When you challenge and conquer self-doubt, you will have a powerful foundation of self-confidence and self-acceptance from which to live your life.
Viewing the world through that lens makes it possible to accept yourself and others without reservations.
You will recognize and honor the fact that everyone matters and is beautiful in his/her own way — including YOU.
You deserve to live a happy, confident life. It is up to you to choose it.
You can’t control everything, but you can control your thoughts and the inner critic whose insidious whispers create self-doubt — and believe in yourself.
Keep your inner critic permanently on mute and live a beautiful life — with confidence — for many years to come!
I know you can do it!
Related Articles:
Leave a Reply