I want to talk about the inner critic,
That voice that we hear out in the world in our family and friends and that we hear in ourselves that basically has nothing to say but what's wrong what's not going right what needs improvement it loves to use words like should you should do this you should do that it's one way to catch it in action is to hear it shoulds the inner critic shoulds on you it takes a should on others should should should it has many standards for how we should be now a lot of these standards are unreasonable and the inner critic expects us to somehow not be a human being but to be a saint or to be a perfect whatever so the inner critic can never be satisfied because it will always find something wrong there's some perfectionist energy linked up with the inner critic but one way to extract some value from the inner critic is to listen closely to what the inner critic criticizes you about the inner critic will not criticize you about polka-dancing unless something in you really wants to be a good polka dancer the inner critic will not criticize you about how you made those cheeseburgers unless there is something in you that really wants to make good food for people and wants to be a competent cook so my point is to listen to the categories of things that the inner critic harps on you about and see if those aren't places where you deeply value doing them well so for example if the inner critic harps on you for your appearance then there's a deep value of looking good there's a deep value of beauty you may be able to do something about that you may not perhaps the inner critic criticizes you after you have a conversation with somebody because you didn't feel like you really got across how you felt so maybe in there there's a value of needing to communicate with more nuance needing to communicate more honestly more transparently maybe the inner critic gets on you because your house is messy the inner critic says you're always messy god you're so messy you don't know how to keep house you're a slob whether that's actually objectively true or not I don't know but you know if the inner critic does that regularly there is some value something in you wants the house to be clean wants order to be there so this is not something that is always true the inner critic sometimes just criticizes because if it didn't criticize it would no longer exist so it criticizes to maintain its own being but often and especially repetitive areas the inner critic is criticizing an area that you deeply care about that I deeply care about and I can extract some nectar from its poison by saying hmm I really care about this am i putting my heart into this thing I really care about am i really valuing engaging this thing I really care about sometimes the answer maybe yes you already are engaging that and sometimes the inner critic is helping in its twisted way us see what we really love and what really matters to us so don't get shit on and don't let the inner critic should on others or their lives but extract some value from what it has to say because it often carries it often points to what is really meaningful to us
