“The human race is notorious for being afraid of the wrong things.
The trail of history is littered with discarded fears that once
erroneously controlled mankind’s destiny”
Andy Stanley
How many times have you given up on a dream because you have chosen to listen to that ‘little voice’ in your head that tells you that you ‘can’t do it’ or ‘what’s the point?’ That tiny inner voice is the critic that lives inside each of us and causes many a bright future to come to a screeching halt. Just like your Mom probably freaked out when you ran with a stick, your inner ‘mom’ worries and frets over new challenges that arise in your life, often creating just enough doubt to make you believe that you can’t do “it”, whatever it may be.
There are times when listening to your ‘gut’ comes in handy. We have talked in the past about fine-tuning your intuition. However, often what you would like to perceive or call something a gut reaction, it may simply be your internal fear of failure or rejection that begins to surface before the event even takes place. How do you squelch our inner critic so that you can move forward and build the life and businesses that you dream of?
Silencing or Transforming your Inner Critic
First, listen to your inner voice and make a list of what you hear, elaborating on how you feel about each item. You guys know that I am a big fan of written lists, especially when we are trying to work something out. In its written form, you can look at the voice of the inner critic in the clear light of day instead of turning it over, and over, and over inside your mind.
After you have listened and made your list, then you can choose an appropriate response to what your critic tells you. You can make the choice to ignore the negative. Remember that if you start to reaffirm your best qualities daily and you can begin to ‘reprogram’ yourself to taking your critic’s suggestions as positive messages rather than a steady barrage of negatives.
There is a concept, the Law of Attraction, that has found a huge following with people who simply want to create a more positive life of abundance. Whether you are spiritual or religious, or not-so-much, the basic idea is simple. We attract what we think about.
Choosing to challenge your ‘little voices’ and inner critic, and change your negative thinking will have an impact on every single aspect of your life. You will create positive habits that even your worst inner critic can’t bring down!
Thoughts?
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21560098@N06/5637235087/sizes/z/in/photostream/
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I loved your blog. Great information and just what I needed to hear. My inner critic never shuts up, so I have to work at not listening to her. Your encouragement will help me do that.
Thanks Donna, happy to help. We all have at least one, and the hard part is to not fall into the trap of listening.
Thanks for the taking the time to comment.
Martina
I do love your messages here, Martina. Thank you for being such an inspiration for us. This one was just as encouraging as the last one. You’re right too, most of our answers we seek are right there within us, waiting for us to ask the right questions. If we can manage to silence that inner critic we’d see a lot more of what we want become available to us.
For me, I spent most of my life listening to what the inner critic was telling me wasn’t possible for me, based solely on what I heard other’s say about me.
Unfortunately, it took my mother’s death to wake me up to what I’m capable of, and I have set out to do everything I thought she could do, but never had the chance to do.
Fabulous post, my friend. I really appreciate you sharing this message. It was a very timely piece. Blessings.
Well said, Dee. We all spend wayy too much time listening to our inner critic, and it usually takes some kind of jolt to “awaken us.”
Thanks for taking the time to comment, my friend.
Martina