Six essential moves for making peace with your inner critic
Changing careers is one of the fastest routes to the outer reaches of your comfort zone. It’s an exhilarating, often scary adventure and an instant call to arms for your fearsome inner critic.
Approach the edge of your comfort zone, and your critic will be waiting.
Get prepared by giving them a face and form. Writer Tara Mohr’s image of a border security guard patrolling the perimeter and wielding a load hailer resonates with me.
You may not see your feisty inner doomsayer, but you’re unlikely to miss their messages.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? HOW COULD YOU BE SO RECKLESS AND DUMB? IT’S NOT SAFE HERE FOR THE LIKES OF CLUELESS YOU! ‘GO BACK!’”
What if someone else was also waiting for you to test your boundaries. A kind, wise version of older, more experienced you.
What if your intuitive inner mentor was there to tell you, ‘you’ve got this’, ‘go on, try it,’ ’whatever happens next, you’ll handle it.’
Truth is, your head, heart, and gut are home to both critic and mentor.
Lots of us are well acquainted with our shouty, scathing critic. But barring the occasional ‘lucky hunch,’ we may barely know our softly spoken mentor.
Before you can start to listen to and talk with your mentor, you need to calm your critic.
Calm your inner critic
While you’d struggle to get rid of your critic, you can learn to live peacefully with them.
Understand and accept them
Your inner critic is part of your human hardwiring, designed to keep you safe. They’re probably not going anywhere, so there’s little point in hatching a plot to banish them.
Eons ago, they’d have warned you against risky behaviours likely to get you eaten by a bear or exiled from your tribe.
Make yourself vulnerable, and your critic swings into action.
Now your critic is dead scared that changing careers will expose you to the modern equivalent of prowling bears, failure, and humiliation. In cahoots with your inner fraud police who feed on impostor syndrome, they also suspect that you lack what it takes to succeed.
You do have what it takes, so don’t let them convince you otherwise.
Put them in their place
You are not your inner critic. It can be tough to remember this when you’re feeling vulnerable and under attack. Nor are you the useless twit they make you out to be.
You’re the capable, highly aware human who is listening to the rant. You’re the person feeling scared or sad or angry and working out what to do about it.
Tara Mohr’s calls her critic ‘the voice of not-me.’ Try naming your inner pessimist, Mine’s called Mavis, and I’m nothing like her.
In Claire Bowditch’s fun and insightful audiobook ‘Tame Your Inner Critic’, she explains her use of the acronym FOF for ‘f-off Frank’ to tell her inner critic to get out of her way.
Separate yourself from your critic and see them for who they are. A single self-doubting strand in the tapestry of impressive, imperfect, evolving you.
Thank them
Give your critic a gracious nod and a kind word. Although they’re making a mess of things, they’re trying to help. Say something like,
‘Mavis, I know you’re scared, and thanks for worrying. But honestly, I’m fine with posting this article on LinkedIn. No bad things can happen. If it gets zero feedback, I’m OK with that, and I’ll try something different next time.’
As with most human critics, acknowledging, thanking, and agreeing to differ takes the heat out of things. Conversely, shouting back or arguing the point enflames everything.
Shushing your inner critic, makes space for your inner mentor. Your protective inner critic fears falling over and looking stupid or getting hurt. Your intuitive inner mentor knows what a skilful, curious, creative human you are.
Connect with your inner mentor
Your inner mentor is always there, but it can be tricky to hear and trust them. They’re on the scene whenever you have a sneaking hunch, a burst of gut instinct, or an Aha moment.
Unlike your critic’s noisy rants, your mentor’s quiet comments and lightning insights can slip past before you’ve grasped them.
Time and training can help you tune into your inner mentor and connect to your kindest, wisest self.
Stay still
Meditate or try Tara Mohr’s guided visualisation. Give your thinking brain a rest and lead with your intuitive, feeling self.
Focus gently but deliberately on making space for listening to your intuition. Your inner mentor can be as reliable a source of sound advice and creative solutions as an external one.
Once you’ve learned to listen and look for comments and advice, try asking your mentor some specific questions. Ask about what matters to them, what they look like, how they live.
Slow down
Take time out from your daily busyness. Try yoga or journaling, or another form of quiet self-care that works for you. These practices can make it easier to tap into your mentor’s wisdom. Think of them as you twenty years from now.
Be open to their advice in different forms, a short comment, an image, a feeling, a happenstance encounter in real life.
Your mentor may not always tell you what you want to hear. However, it will always come from that part of you that has your best interests at heart.
Strengthen your sage
Stanford University Lecturer and CEO Coach Shirzad Chamine’s work on Positive Intelligence takes a practical and profound look at how our inner sage and saboteurs serve or sink us.
Chamine’s self-saboteur identikit may give you an insight into how you’re dealing with both.
Want more tips for calming your inner critic? They’re here.
By Jo Green, Career Change Coach
I know that when you find what you love, heart and soul, your life changes. I work every day with people who are reshaping their current careers, starting new enterprises or searching for a new direction. Basically I help people who don’t like their job to figure out what to do instead!
As a Careershifters and Firework Advanced Certified Coach and experienced career changer myself, I can help you figure out what fulfilling work looks like for you.
