Hello and welcome.
I'm so glad you're here.
Now I want to talk about a voice,
One that most of us know extremely well,
Even if we've never really examined it.
It's the voice that tells you you're not good enough.
You're not doing enough.
You're not smart enough,
Not successful enough.
The voice that replays your mistakes at 3am and keeps a very detailed record of every time you've fallen short.
The inner critic.
The Stoics had a lot to say about this,
Not because they were immune to it.
Marcus Aurelius,
One of the most powerful men who ever lived,
Wrote privately about his own self-doubt,
His own sense of inadequacy.
But they developed tools for examining that voice,
Questioning it,
And ultimately refusing to be ruled by it.
That's what today is about,
A stoic lens on the inner critic.
What it is,
Where it comes from,
And a simple but powerful practice that you can start using today.
So the Stoics made a distinction that I come back to again and again.
They called it the dichotomy of control.
The idea that everything in life falls into one of two categories.
What is up to us and what is not up to us.
So what is up to us,
Our thoughts,
Our choices,
Our values,
Our efforts,
And how we respond to what happens.
What is not up to us is other people's opinions,
Outcomes we can't guarantee,
The past,
What other people think of us.
Here's the thing about the inner critic.
It almost always speaks in the language of things outside our control.
You should have done better.
People think less of you.
You're falling behind.
You're not what you should be.
Every single one of those statements is either about the past,
Which is gone,
Or about other people's perception,
Which we cannot control.
The inner critic is almost by definition focused entirely on things that are not up to us.
Epictetus,
A former slave who had every reason to feel inadequate by the world's standards,
Said this.
Men are disturbed not by the things which happen,
But by the opinions about the things.
The critic isn't reporting facts.
Is offering opinions.
And opinions can be examined,
They can be questioned,
They can be challenged.
So here's the practice.
The next time the inner critic speaks,
And it will,
I want you to pause and ask three stoic questions.
The first is,
Is this true?
Like actually,
Verifiably,
Objectively true?
Or is it an interpretation?
Habit of thought,
Something someone said to you once that lodged itself and never left.
The second.
.
.
Is this in my control?
Is this about something I can actually do something about right now?
Or is it about the past or about what someone else thinks?
And the third question.
Is this useful?
Does this thought serve me?
Does it make me better?
Kinda.
Wiser,
Moral,
Effective.
Or does it simply make me smaller?
Now if the answer to all three is no,
And it usually is,
Then you have every stoic right to set that thought down.
Not suppress it,
Not fight it,
Just refuse to give it your attention.
Because here is what the Stoics understood about value.
Your worth is not determined by your output,
Your achievements,
Your reputation,
Or anyone's opinion of you,
Including your own inner critics.
Your worth comes from your character,
From how you choose to act,
From the values you live by.
And that is always,
Always up to you.
Now the inner critic will not disappear overnight,
But you can change your relationship with it.
You can stop treating it as truth and start treating it as what it actually is.
A habit of thoughts that you have the power to examine and the power to choose not to follow.
That is stoicism in practice.
Not suppression,
Not toxic positivity,
Just clear seams.
So remember those three questions.
Is this true?
Is this in my control?
And is this useful?
And chances are you will see that you are not what that voice says you are.
And you never were.
So much love,
Take care of yourself.
And I'll see you soon.
