Inner Critic: How to Befriend it and Master Your Mind

Do you find yourself constantly bombarded by the inner critic? Do you feel it hard to be motivated to do things because your inner critic’s voice is always there telling you that you can’t do it or something bad will happen?

In this article I’m going to share with you why we have the inner critic in the first place but then go on to how you can befriend it and make it your greatest ally.

Many of us are afraid of our inner critic. We hear it and it intimidates us. We want to ignore it and tell ourselves that it isn’t there or we like to think that we aren’t affected by it. But the truth of reality is that it’s there, it’s loud, and it wants to be heard.

Why do we have the inner critic in the first place?

The inner critic, while it seems it may be trying to self-sabotage us in reality is there to help us. It is the voice that we inherited from our family and our culture to keep us safe. It’s a past voice that has been hardwired into us so that we stick with our tribe.

From an evolutionary perspective our body is hardwired like it was in primitive times. Primitive meaning when we formed small bands or mini cultures to survive. Back then there wasn’t international travel or cars. If you got ousted out of your tribe then you were alone and faced nature alone and would probably die. So there is a lot of fear contained within our bodies whenever we start to step out of our predetermined cultural boundaries.

This fear shows up as the inner critic. It’s a voice that is telling you if you leave your family, or job, or tribe then you will never find another and you will die. 1000’s of years ago this was very true however now it is hardly the case.

Our inner critic mostly comes up when we start to test new things in the world. When we start acting out in new unconventional ways. We start pushing the envelope. As a human being our thoughts and emotions and subsequent actions are learned behaviors. Many people are just doing what they saw. Monkey see or monkey do.

However, there are a few of us who aren’t OK with the status quo and we push ourselves further because we want to evolve past our ancestral . We want to create new patterns of existence and live within connection with our environment in a different way.

This is how we evolve. If you want to evolve into something greater then you have to push past your inner critic. How do you do this? You befriend it.

Whenever you hear your inner critic say something to you all you have to do is embrace it. Agree with it! This sounds counter intuitive, but it works. For instance. Sometimes I’m so happy and I’m walking down the street I’ll just start to skip like a child. It makes me feel even happy. I feel light and bubbly. Because I grew up in an environment where manliness was always looked at as being somewhat stoic and stable and stern I developed an inner critic that wouldn’t condone these actions. Sometimes I hear the word fag when I’m skipping down the street. Immediately as I hear that word, I tell myself, “Yes, maybe I’m. What’s wrong with that?” I ask and I own it completely.

This retrains the brain to not be scared of criticism but rather accept it. Self-criticism and negativity isn’t hard to accept if you don’t see them as being negative or critical in the first place. You embrace it and suddenly the pain, agitation, and negativity loses all it’s power.

So when I hear myself criticizing myself I agree with it. If I eat a burger and I hear an inner critic say, “Your fat,” which is probably linked to body image disorders then I say, “Oh yes and I’m going to be very fat today.” And I laugh it off because it’s just a thought or voice within your head that usually has nothing to do with external reality.

Deepest Blessings and Pranamams!

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