Embracing Self-Support
What if you could be your own greatest cheerleader?
I have to confess right out of the gate here - I’ve never been someone who beats themselves up for every perceived mistake.
And while I understand where this state of mind comes from - at least for some people - a part of me is genuinely puzzled about why someone would continue to do that to themself right through adulthood.
I know it’s a habit. I know habits are hard to break. But look at it this way. If you had to live with someone who spoke to you like you speak to yourself, how long would that relationship last?
And yet, you live with your inner voice every moment you’re awake.
How do you feel about that self-critical voice? Do you honour what it says? Make thoughtful changes, aim to do better? Or do you (as I suspect is the case for most people) hate the very sound of it and mentally stick your fingers in your ears and sing la-la-la very loudly?
That inner critic likely originates from childhood. When we’re very young - before the age of about 2 or 3, we don’t understand the difference between what’s ourselves and what’s outside of ourselves. That’s why young children think they’re hiding if they can’t see you. And people rarely explain things to very young children. So you’ll been told off, or told ‘no’, but were you also told why? Or better yet, what you should have done instead? And if you were, did you understand why? Chances are there’s a ‘no’ in there somewhere. So you’ll have concluded there was something wrong with you, and that’s a belief that tends to stay with us for life, unless we consciously winkle it out and replace it.
And in the meantime? Say hello to your Inner Critic!
They say you have to be very good and confident with a task to not be bothered by having someone watching you do it. Otherwise, it makes you nervous. And isn’t it the same with your inner critic?
If you’re doing something you know you’re good at, you’re likely to be less worried about what your inner voice will say. But for most people, it seems to me, there’s very little they feel really competent at. Could that be because the inner critic comes out every time they try it?
As I’ve said before, you wouldn’t expect to pick up a violin and immediately play a concert-level concerto. You’d have to learn where the notes are, how to use a bow, how to read sheet music, how to make the music louder, softer, flowing or staccato. There’s a lot to practice when you’re learning an instrument. You know that, and if someone else, and especially someone you love, was learning to play, you’d cut them some slack, right? (Until you couldn’t bear that hideous caterwauling any more!) If it was the neighbour you can’t stand, you might be onto the Council the second they started up.
And that’s what your inner critic does. Its way of keeping you safe is to stop you risking embarrassment, and we’ve been taught that being imperfect or making mistakes is embarrassing. So the moment you try something new and it doesn’t go perfectly, that little (or not so little) voice starts up, telling you you’re useless, and you’ve never been any good at anything, so why would you think you could do this?
And perhaps it’s not entirely wrong. Perhaps you’ve never practiced anything for long enough to get really good at it. But who’s to blame for that? Your inner critic, of course! But as the saying goes, the person who never made a mistake never made anything. You learn from mistakes, and only through practice can you improve.
So, what if you could hear what your inner critic says, thank it for its opinion, and tell it to wait and see? That you want to do this, you want to get good at it, and you’re going to do it. And Inner You can go take a seat in the corner and let you get on with it?
If you’ve read that with a lift of the heart, a tiny smile, or even a mental fist-pump, you’re ready for the next level. Go do it, practice and learn, and to hell with that inner voice!
If you read it with a sinking heart, thinking you’ll never get the better of that voice, never be able to not listen to its constant nagging, be kind to yourself. You’ve lived with that constant criticism nearly all your life. It’s got good at what it does.
Do you have a supportive friend you could talk to about it? Book a ‘coffee date’ and spill it all out.
Do you love crystals and have or want to have a large and varied collection? Try picking out a piece of labradorite you really love and carry it around with you, place it beside you wherever you sit, or have it near your head when you sleep.
Judy Hall suggests in The Crystal Bible that one of the ways labradorite can support you is to help you see the true intention behind how people behave. That goes for your inner critic as much as for other people. She also says it helps remove other people’s projections - things they think about you and expect of you - so you can be more of who you really are; and also that it can bring up memories from the past. By laying those memories back down with a different emotion attached, you can change how you feel about them.
We’ve been taught to avoid difficult emotions, but the best way to treat them is as important notifications on your phone. They’re trying to tell you something. If you listen to them, rather than trying to drown them out, they can give you their message and go away. Otherwise, you’re just hitting ‘snooze’ and they’ll keep coming back.
The same goes for your inner critic. If you acknowledge what it says and then carry on anyway, you can prove it wrong more often than not. But the next question is, will you notice? We tend to operate on what’s known as ‘confirmation bias’. That means we notice all the things that ‘prove’ what we believe, and discount, ignore or explain away things that ‘disprove’ our beliefs.
A friend and colleague of mine suffers with lack of self-belief at times, and has days when she feels she’s achieved nothing and been of no use. So her new strategy is this. She’s bought herself a notebook and some stickers. Every day, she writes down the date, and whenever she’s done something useful or helpful, she puts a sticker in the book. At the end of the day, she can look back and see just how much she’s achieved that day. She feels it’s the best thing she’s ever done for her self-belief, and she loves adding new stickers with every helpful action she takes. You could, of course, draw a gold star, or use a different coloured pen for each one.
There are of course many other ways to boost your self-belief, self-worth and self-esteem. Maybe you’ve thought of one, or been told about something you thought you might try but haven’t quite got around to it? I’d love to hear about it - and how it goes when you do it.
You aren’t here to sit quietly in the corner and do nothing. There are things only you can contribute in this world, and the things you dream of will be part of that. What a shame if the world never benefits from them because your inner critic shouted too loudly!
As I’ve said before - be yourself; everyone else is taken. What can you do today to help yourself be more you and less the timid, shy, or self-effacing yes-man of your inner critic?
Whatever comes to mind, do it! Book a date and time in your diary to do it regularly. Check in with yourself. How are you doing with that today? Notice when things are going right and remember that when they don’t, you’re still learning the ropes.
Thank you for your input, Inner Voice. Now let me get on with it!