Silencing the Inner Critic

Everyone on Earth has an inner critic, a voice that keeps telling us we’re not good enough. Not rich enough, not attractive enough, not smart enough, not religious enough. No matter what we achieve, this voice just moves the finish line further away. It’s never satisfied, and nothing is ever enough. Because we keep listening to this nonsense, we end up stuck on a merry-go-round of misery our whole lives.

If you listen to this voice, you’ll notice something important. The next time it’s chattering away, pay attention to what it says. You’ll find that 90% of it is about what’s wrong with your life. It never tells you what it’s grateful for. It never gives you credit for your kindness, generosity, compassion, or love. Instead, it keeps pointing out your flaws, what you didn’t do, and what you could have done better. Because the goal it sets can never be reached, it never stops whispering in your ear.

Let’s start by looking at how thinking works. There are two main kinds of thinking: practical thinking and personal thinking. Practical thinking is what you need to solve a simple math problem or put an appointment on your calendar. It makes life easier, and once the task is done, the thinking stops. Nothing more follows.

Personal thinking is different. It’s when your thoughts decide who you are. This kind of thinking almost always comes from the ego, the part of you that needs to feel important. It sounds like: I wish I had a better job, I’m hurt by what so-and-so said to me, or My children are a disappointment. All of these come from one belief: I am not good enough. That one thought is what keeps your mind going and going. This kind of thinking never ends, because your ego needs you to keep building stories, adding more drama to them, and living through them in order to survive. This is the kind of thinking we need to focus on.

Listening is a quiet skill. To really listen, you have to do it without judging. If your thoughts never let up, it will be very hard to hear clearly what they’re saying. So now we come to the hands-on part, where you’ll try an experiment on yourself.

Before we start, I want to mention something important. It’s possible that other beings, dark spiritual forces, have gained a hold on you because you’ve chosen to live through your human ego. They may be flooding you with their thoughts and keeping you confused and stuck. Nearly everyone on Earth is affected by these dark forces. If even Jesus and the Buddha were affected, you and I are no different. So I strongly recommend asking a higher power to help free you from them.

Most spiritual traditions throughout history have spoken about God. They may use different names, but they’re talking about the same thing. And contrary to what many preachers say, you can reach out to God, or one of God’s helpers, directly for help and guidance. You don’t need to belong to any religion. In fact, not belonging might be better, because you haven’t been taught to believe that God is far away from you. Just remember that prayer works best with humility, surrender, and an open heart.

After you’ve prayed for help and guidance, go into a room with no phone, no computer, and no TV, so nothing can distract you. Keep only a pen and paper on the table. Then wait for your thoughts to come. Write down each thought as it appears, starting a new line for each one.

Your first thoughts might look like this:

I am bored.

This sucks.

Is it going to rain tomorrow?

I hope the Rangers lose so that the Wings get that last playoff spot.

I’m never going to let anyone set me up again – that was the worst date ever.

I wonder how many times she’s been divorced?

What a terrible guy at the party last weekend! Treated me like shit!

I hope I get that promotion; I know I’m better than everyone else and I should get it. I’ll quit if I don’t!

The downstairs door needs to be fixed, that creaking noise it makes is so annoying.

These first thoughts may seem shallow, about relationships, work, and so on, but they’re covering up something deeper. You’ll need to wait a while for the deeper thoughts to come up. Just keep writing your thoughts down, as if you were watching them from a distance. You can even write down how you react to them. For example, you might think, I shouldn’t be thinking these thoughts. What’s wrong with me! Write that down too. Once these surface thoughts run out, which can take some time, the deeper, more important ones will come. They’ll hit closer to home, something like:

I am lonely.

I am afraid of failure.

I am afraid of being judged by other people.

I feel terrible about myself.

I feel so unattractive.

I am so angry with myself.

I feel like shit.

Once you’ve broken through these layers of the ego, you can start to see yourself as you really are. The key question to ask yourself is: Why am I thinking these thoughts? Keep asking it, over and over, until you find the answer. In the end, it will lead back to one root thought: I am not good enough. For most people, this is a sobering moment. That single thought causes not only your own suffering, but also much of the suffering, judgment, and violence in the world.

When you judge yourself for not living up to some outside standard, you start beating yourself up for your supposed flaws. That self-criticism leads to more judgment, and the cycle keeps going. It only stops when you take full responsibility for your actions and your situation. As I often say, you have always been responsible for your own suffering. These self-defeating thoughts and beliefs come from your inner critic, the ego you have given power to. There are two voices inside you: the voice of love, which is your true self, and the voice of fear, which is the ego. You’ve mistaken the ego’s voice for your own. But now you can choose differently.

So how do we get rid of this constant I am not good enough?

You don’t defeat your inner critic with force or anger. You defeat it with compassion and forgiveness. Let me say that again: the most powerful tools against the ego are compassion and forgiveness. The most powerful phrase I can give you to answer the ego is simply, “It’s okay.” You need to turn the ego’s harsh, judging self-talk, which criticizes you all the time, into the gentle, kind, forgiving self-talk of your true self, the self that is part of our Creator.

How does this work in real life? Here’s how:

Your Ego: I feel so lonely.

Your True Self: It’s okay to feel lonely. I’m doing the best I can, and I’m only human. I know this thought comes from believing I’m not good enough, and I believed that because I don’t fully love myself. I forgive myself for making a mistake. It’s okay to make mistakes, and I will learn from this. From now on, I’ll try to be more loving and kind to myself. I’m not upset or angry at my ego at all. I simply didn’t know any better, and that’s okay.

Do you see the difference? The ego has nowhere left to go. Even if it comes back with something like:

Your Ego: See, look what an idiot I am. I’m reading self-help nonsense on the internet to fix my problems.

Your True Self: It’s okay to be an idiot. Honestly, I’ve been an idiot this whole time. I never realized how much I was beating myself up and judging myself. I did the best I could, and I forgive myself for being so hard on myself. It’s okay.

Again, the ego has nowhere to go. This is what you need to do again, and again, and again… until the ego loses most of its sting and its power. I’ll warn you: this isn’t a quick fix. You’ve spent years, decades, maybe even lifetimes giving power to your ego, so it won’t disappear all at once. It may take several years to really change in this way.

But if you treat yourself with more compassion and forgiveness, I promise the nonstop thinking will drop by at least half, and by as much as 90% once this becomes second nature. You’ll find a huge amount of space in your mind, and you’ll feel that everything really is okay. Eventually, with practice, you’ll recognize the ego’s fearful thoughts right away, and you won’t even need to answer them. Simply noticing them will be enough to stop the train of thought.