A Practical Framework to Befriending Your Inner Critic

There’s a prevailing belief that being kinder to yourself will make us less ambitious, hinder productivity, and then everything around you will fall apart. The idea of simply being kinder to yourself about the challenges you have somehow becomes a boogeyman that blocks you from feeling good about who you are and how you’re living.

The underlying belief for so many is, “If I’m not grinding all the time, I don’t know what my value is.”

You may overextend yourself for a job that ultimately still decides to lay you off when the company runs out of money. You might lose sleep over sales reports that your boss demanded and never looked at. You berate yourself over less-than-perfect feedback, because you make it about you, not simply work that needs additional edits.

There’s a pervasive myth that if you’re hard on yourself, we’ll get better. But at what cost? And who said that’s the only way to improve?

While dedication and hard work are certainly important, the idea that burnout and chronic stress are badges of honor creates psychological harm and actually diminishing returns. Down the road, it sabotages productivity, creativity, and general outlook on life.

In reality, mental and emotional well-being is the foundation on which true and lasting progress is built — this fact doesn’t exactly fit into the Hustle Until You Drop culture we’re swimming in.

If you’re sitting here wondering if this is you, here are some behaviors that we’ve seen in ourselves that mean you could benefit from being a little nicer to yourself:

• Everything little thing that happens feels like a big deal, the end of the world, a crisis

• Most interactions, tasks, or events in your life feel like they’re pass/fail — you’re either thrilled or crushed, nothing in between

• Your thinking is very black and white, always jumping to extreme conclusions and completely missing the gray area

• You tend to be risk averse, hesitate to try new things, and someone seeing you try makes you want to throw up

• You’re afraid to ask questions and hate not knowing the answer when you think you should

• You have a lot of ideas about who you “should” be and what you “should” be able to do

If you related to any of these, we’re going to whisper this very gently, but stay with us: That’s your ego.

Among other things, egos present stories about who you should be, how things go, and what your life look like. Your ego is always trying to protect you, but often, these stories are making you miserable. If your ego currently has a lot of power over you and your self-image, this is a good place to start: understand that the stories your brain is telling you about yourself are just stories, and you don’t have to interpret them as truth.

If you can recognize that the ego’s narrative is just a story, the fog lifts from the situation and you can see that it usually has nothing to do with you. Attaching stories and meaning to every little thing means you’re setting trip wires for yourself all over the place, and it’s only a matter of time before one of makes you face plant. Ultimately those ego stories are a trap.

Over time, your harsh default reaction will begin to soften and actually make it easier to get to the other side of the difficult situation. You’ll start realizing how much better it feels to celebrate your accomplishments, regardless of how “insignificant” the task might feel. Just because it’s normal or expected doesn’t mean you can’t also feel proud of yourself. They’re not mutually exclusive.

You might feel ridiculous celebrating the fact that you did the dishes or answered an email that you put off, but self compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with repetitions, allowing you to withstand the bigger, heavier setbacks in life when they arise.

In 2012, Google embarked on a 2-years long study of 180 of its teams to figure out what makes a team successful. Overwhelmingly, the key indicator of success was called psychological safety.

Those who feel psychologically safe feel more comfortable experimenting and taking risks, because there’s less chance that making a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea will result in embarrassment or punishment. Even though Google’s studied this among teams, but the importance of psychology safety within the individual equally as important.

Extending yourself kindness and understanding creates internal psychological safety. Cultivating a relationship with yourself where it’s safe to take risks means that failure doesn’t have to result in a days-long rumination about what an idiot you are.

Self compassion is a doorway for curiosity, rather than judgement. As a result, you get better at managing stress. You become more resilient, motivated and content, which fuels your capacity to achieve what you want in the long term.

If you still believe that your critical inner dialogue is the reason for your success, we’ll leave you with the sage words of Brené Brown: