Inner Critic to Inner Ally: Beginner’s Guide

For the past six months or so my travels have taken me to meetings and trainings with lots of women in direct sales. A funny thing happened….  I started hearing a term that I hadn’t heard in a long time. I kept running into people who wanted help to manage their “Inner Critic.”

I’ve heard it (the Inner Critic) called a lot of things:

• When I connect with online writing communities like NaNoWriMo, there’s a lot of talk about “The Inner Editor….”
• When I worked in the addictions field, lots of people called it “The Addict in the Attic,” or “My Disease”
• “The Committee,” or “The Jury” comes up in more general conversation

The point is, it seems to be something most of us struggle with from time-to-time.  My friend Annie says “Most people are one thought away from being happier, healthier and more successful.” I agree with her. Regardless of the ‘title’ I have held at any given time, my work has been about offering people the opportunity to connect with a new thought. I like that. Mastering that ‘voice in the head’ that says ‘you’re not good enough’ is important work.

This came in my e-mail the other day and I saved it.  It seems to fit.

“It is hard to let old beliefs go. They are familiar. We are comfortable with them and have spent years building systems and developing habits that depend on them. Like a man who has worn eyeglasses so long that he forgets he has them on, we forget that the world looks to us the way it does because we have become used to seeing it that way through a particular set of lenses. Today, however, we need new lenses. And we need to throw the old ones away.” – Kenichi Ohmae

I’ve created an affordable self-study program to help people think differently about their Inner Critics.  It’s a download, designed to be 3-hole punched and housed in a notebook.  It’s over here.