Few things are more distracting than the cruel stories we tell ourselves.
— Ryder Carroll
Do you hear voice? We all do. Each of us has a running dialog inside our head. Our inner voice. Our consciousness. This inner voice is usually running all the time. Sometimes it is giving us impressions or may only be experienced as emotions. Other times it our inner voice is giving us running commentary on life.
At its best, this inner voice is a trusted counselor and friend. It can help us think through problems, reason about the world and learn new things.
At its worst, this inner voice is a ruthless critic. It can berate us with criticism, encourage our doubt, and just make us feel bad.
Much of our happiness and success or misery and trouble in life is determined by which version of our inner voice we choose to listen to.
The thing we must remember is that our inner voice is telling us impressions and opinions. Listening to only these opinions can sometimes lead us down dark and twisted paths.
We must mentally take a step back and examine the things our inner dialog tells us. This is especially true when our inner critic is telling us how bad life is or how badly we have failed. These inner stories can destroy our happiness and motivation and prevent us from working to improve. When things are going well, our inner critic can rob us of the joy we could be feeling.
If you have ever felt overwhelmed by feelings of worthlessness or doubt, you know that it can be very hard to ignore your inner critic. We can start by accepting that our inner voice is telling us opinions and not expressing objective reality. If we can understand that it can start to remove the power of our inner critic. Another thing we can do consider what a close and kind friend would tell us about our inner criticisms or what would we tell a friend if they were in our situation.
As we start to do this, we can reclaim our power to learn and grow. We can find more joy, happiness and confidence.
What is something you regularly criticize yourself about? What would a kind friend tell you about that criticism? How would your feelings and perspective be different if you listened to the advice from your kind friend?