Taming The Inner Critic

Ready to break free from the grip of your inner critic? Join this empowering session as we explore the 3 Principles to tame self-doubt and cultivate self-compassion. Learn powerful strategies to quiet the critical voice within, foster a kinder inner dialogue, and unlock your true potential. Embrace this transformative journey of self-acceptance and reclaim your confidence. It's time to silence the inner critic and step into your greatness.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the CalmCast,

A time to feel calm and think clearly.

I'm Claire Downham,

The Queen of Calm,

A Transformational Life Coach.

I was a burnt out head teacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying,

And I want to prevent you from having to do the same.

The CalmCast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state,

Which is calm and clarity.

Just listen like you would listen to music,

With an open mind and curiosity.

There's nothing else to do.

Now let's relax into today's episode.

Good morning,

If it's morning where you are.

Good morning,

Good afternoon or evening I should say,

Shouldn't I really,

Because some of you will be watching this at a different or listen to this at a different time of day to where I am,

Or perhaps you are watching it live but you're somewhere else in the world.

So today,

Do you know how the irony of life is?

Like,

I've turned up late today and I've turned up late to talk about the inner critic,

And of course she's going a bit spare with me right now.

It's just ironic,

Isn't it,

How the universe presents us with these opportunities to explore things right,

Like,

In front of our faces.

Because what happened was I have two alarms that go off,

So some of you will be listening to this as a recording,

But some of you will be listening to it live,

And I put an alarm on,

I put one alarm on at 25 to 8 and another one at 43 minutes,

Well,

Just before quarter to,

So that I'm here ready.

In between the two alarms my phone ran out of charge because I'm trying at the moment to let my phone run out of battery,

Go right down to try and refresh the battery because it's got a little bit tricky and I understand if you let them go flat a few times they come back to life again.

So in between the two alarms my phone switched off,

I put it on charge but I didn't switch it back on because obviously it had zero battery.

I switched it back on now,

So I won't miss the rest of my appointments today.

But it didn't go off,

So I didn't arrive,

And I just suddenly thought,

Because I was absorbed in doing something else,

I'm exploring next month's topic,

Which is going to be productivity.

I'm super excited about a new course that I've got on Insight Timer to run alongside my other two courses,

So please do explore those,

They're really cool.

So I have three courses,

Well I have three courses hopefully today,

Or later this week,

Calm,

Balance and Clarity with Ease,

Fulfilling Your Full Potential with the Three Principles and Stress to Success,

Which I can't even say,

I don't know why I've called it that.

Stress to Success,

A Three Principles approach to productivity,

Which with,

To effortless productivity actually.

So that will be hopefully live later this week.

I hope by the time you're listening to this actually,

If you're listening on Insight Timer,

You will be experiencing that course,

Which is really cool.

So this morning,

I've turned up late,

And of course the little voice in my head,

The inner critic,

Is going,

Oh,

Why have you managed to do that?

That's not very good,

Is it?

But it lasted such a short time,

Like in the past I can absolutely guarantee that I would have been on at myself in that horrible critical thinking,

Critical thoughts about myself,

The inner critic,

I would have been lost in that for a really,

Really long time.

You know,

Berating myself,

Why didn't I get ready,

Why didn't I realise that my alarm,

Which I'd forgotten,

You know,

Am I getting old,

You know,

Are you stupid?

This just would have been a catalogue,

An absolute catalogue of nonsense going through my head.

But that's really cool to see that now,

That's not so much of a problem.

And I would say it's partly because I'm just quite dismissive of that voice now.

Yeah,

Whatever.

And I was talking about the inner critic on another live on Insight Timer recently,

And I spoke about how it's a bit like,

Why do we listen to that voice?

Because it really is quite mean,

Isn't it,

That voice,

The inner critic?

Oh my goodness,

It's vile.

We wouldn't talk to anybody else like that,

Most of us,

I don't think.

And I said it's a bit like,

You know,

If you got to the traffic lights,

And I said,

You know,

Can you imagine the Joker?

I was trying to think of somebody who was just like,

Really horrible and a bit unpleasant and shouts a lot.

And the Joker came to mind,

My image of the Joker anyway.

Those films have got really dark,

Haven't they?

Batman films.

Anyway,

The Joker is sitting in the back of your car,

You get to a red traffic light and driving along,

And then the Joker's in the back of your car and the Joker's screaming,

Screaming at you,

Go through the red light,

You know,

Go through the red light,

Go through the red light,

Over and over again.

And you're just like,

Oh,

Shut up,

Idiot.

You just would be just like,

You'd just ignore him,

Wouldn't you?

Because he would just go,

Wow,

You're just being ridiculous.

And then when the light went green,

If the Joker then started shouting,

Stop,

Stop,

Go,

You'd just be like,

No,

No,

You're just being ridiculous now.

I know you're ridiculous because the last thing he said was ridiculous.

Now you're saying more ridiculous things.

You're just being ridiculous and you would just ignore it.

You wouldn't necessarily,

I mean,

Eventually you might open the door and push the Joker out.

Not while you're moving,

Obviously,

Because we're not that kind of people,

Are we folks?

We're nice people.

But eventually you would probably just push the Joker out and go,

Oh,

You know,

Enough already.

That's ridiculous.

So I think that's just really,

It's just interesting how we can have a different relationship with some banana,

Some idiot sat in the back of our car shouting,

Go through a red light.

But yet we take this voice in our head so seriously.

And what I would love you to see about that voice is that it's the same thing,

Really.

Like it's just a leftover voice of somebody that was in a bad mood.

Let's think about the Joker being in a bad mood.

He's got out of bed the wrong side.

He's a bit hangry.

He's not very happy.

Batman's got one up on him again.

So he's just like in a foul mood,

Sat in the back of your car.

He's lounging about.

He's probably got a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

He doesn't care that he's smoking in your car.

It's just horrible.

And yet,

And we don't take him seriously because it just looks ludicrous,

Doesn't it?

And,

But when a voice comes in our head saying,

Oh,

You know,

You're an idiot for not turning up on time or whatever else it might say,

There's some reason we take that voice seriously.

And I think it's just because it's in our head.

Like,

Of course it's our thinking.

We take it seriously.

It's who we are.

It's the voice.

That's how we run our life,

Don't we?

With this very serious voice in our head,

This voice that tells us how to behave and has kept us safe for years and years and years.

But that voice is constructed from the same kind of quality of stuff as the voice of the jester.

Somebody in a bad mood,

Somebody who was upset with us,

Somebody who got out of bed the wrong side one day and we happened to be in the flight path of their mood.

Things that we misunderstood.

You know,

I had a really,

Really significant experience probably,

Probably a couple of years ago now where my fiance's little boy had picked up from an adult in his life that he was out of control.

He'd been told that and he repeated it as if it was true.

He'd been in trouble for something and we said,

What's going on with you?

What do you think happened there?

And he said,

Oh,

It's because I'm out of control.

So he had taken the words of an angry parent,

Not the parent that lives with me,

And he had literally said them as if they were true about him.

They had already,

Within weeks,

Had already become part of how he saw himself.

And that really,

That really struck me because I was like,

Oh my goodness,

How quickly does it happen?

And how,

You know,

We obviously redress the balance and helped him to see that that's not who he is.

And that's just,

Parents get upset sometimes and when they're upset,

They say things that aren't true.

We all do,

Don't we?

But when you're a little child,

You take those things on board because your brain is just like that.

It's learning all the time and it's doing some helpful learning.

Like,

Don't touch the hob,

It's hot,

Burn yourself and don't walk out in front of a moving vehicle,

That's going to hurt too.

And all the other sensible things like how to hold a knife and fork and read a book and lots of useful things we're learning.

But we're also learning some things about ourselves that are not true and we're learning that a lot from upset people.

So if you've had a childhood where people were upset a lot,

Then that will have carried on.

So if you're brought up in the seventies and eighties like me,

When teachers and parents and most people who are around children were quite critical,

You know,

We didn't really do praise then,

Not in the same way.

We did treat and mean,

Keep and keen parenting,

As I call it,

Where you,

You know,

Our parents came from a generation who had seen the tail end of a war or they'd been alive during a war and you had to be tough.

And our parents were just trying to toughen us up.

That was,

I think the theory behind it,

But it meant that there wasn't much praise and there was a lot of criticism.

So I grew up with a very loud voice in my head.

But what I'm hoping to point to here is that,

Well,

That's just psychology.

Like that doesn't have the truth of who you are at whatever age you are now,

Decades down the line from when you learned that stuff about you,

Even if it had been true at the time,

Which it wasn't,

Even if it had been true then,

It's not true now.

That's got nothing to do with present moment you.

Present moment you as is infinite,

As so much available to share with the world.

And your inner critic is stopping you doing that a lot of the time.

Like,

I really feel that in this conversation where we're looking to what is our potential?

What is available to us?

It's always going to be covered over by psychology.

If it's covered over,

It's covered over by our psychology.

It's covered over by those things that we learned way back,

Way back in the past.

So it's time to take that voice with a pinch of salt,

I think.

It's time to start ignoring it,

To not take it so seriously,

Because it really isn't the truth of who you are.

So that's it really.

That's it for today.

If you want to explore this further,

My Insight Timer course about revealing your full potential is available to you.

This is,

You know,

Just a little piece of what you can see around revealing your true potential.

There is so much more available to all of us than we can see,

Because we can only see through our thinking.

So thank you so much for being here,

Listening to this.

Have an absolutely beautiful day.

And take that little voice in your head that tells you you're a bit rubbish with a pinch of salt.

It's not the truth of who you are.

Lots of love.

Thank you so much for listening.

There's nothing to do now,

But bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life.

Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm.

This has been the Calm Cast with Clare Downam,

Queen of Calm.

Take care and keep listening.

Reviews

Thank you Clare. Following you now since finding a live chat from you recently.