What is Your Inner Critic Saying ?

TOPICS IN THIS EPISODE

• What is an inner voice ?
• How to recognise  if your inner voice  serves you?
• What to do to develop kind inner voice?

HELPFUL  LINKS

• About the Host  - Ela Senghera 
• Speak to Me - Book Here
• Get Free Brochure  - Be True You in Your Relationship
• Audiobook - Finding Love
• Parenting Book (2nd Edition) - Teach Your Kids to Build a Positive Self-Image

Transcript

Klaudia: How would you define an inner voice? 

Ela: I think most of us are not really familiar with that phrase ''inner voice'', or that they might think it's not real. But actually much of our stress is due to the silent conversations we have with ourselves. Psychologists call this negative self talk. As we go about life we all tend to develop a bad habits along the way and we can actually talk to ourselves quite negatively at times and therefore programme ourselves negatively. This negative self talk is very much connected to this inner voice that we all have. Our negative self talk serves in our attitudes, expectations and our predictions about the future. Sometimes we might find ourselves using words like extremely, incredibly, always or never, and that is actually not serving us in the long term. So we blow things out of proportion by using words like that. But going back to definition, inner voice is our mind chatter. It's the voice we all have, whether we are aware of it or not. Our inner voice is actually responsible for over 80% of decisions we take on daily basis, which can be quite scary. 

Klaudia: Where does it come from? 

Ela: Our inner voice starts forming in our childhood. As soon as we become able to form our thoughts and process them, we develop an inner voice. It's the vocal part of our mind, and it's role is to protect us from dangerous situations, prevent us from danger, prevent us from making the same mistakes over and over. That's all very logical, but one of the key points here is that this tendency to have a very critical inner voice is extremely self-destructive. In fact, self esteem and vulnerability are inversely related. That means that when self self esteem is high, vulnerability is low and vice versa. So people with low self esteem have unfortunately the perfect basis, the perfect ground to develop a very critical inner voice that does not serve them in anything.


Klaudia: Why do we need to keep listening to our inner voice? 

Ela: I think the answer to that is because we feel like it's keeping us safe and it's raising our defences and it prepares us for a possible defeat. So we almost trust instinctively, this inner voice, because we feel like it's like our parents, it's there to guide us and protect us. So many people think it's better we listen to it and and some people mix it up with our intuition. They feel that this inner voice is our intuition, so if our inner voice tells us not to do something it's a sign we shouldn't do it. But actually we couldn't be further away from the truth. And more often than not, our inner voice is holding us back from living our life to our full potential. But we very much see it as the Guardian which is why we listen to it. 

Klaudia: That's fascinating. So this idea that it's our inner parent, is so interesting.  It might have those good intentions but maybe we do need to question it because 100% as you said, it might be quite critical. So how else can it imapct our happiness?

Ela: It can impact our happiness in any different shape and form you can possibly imagine. Because we listen to this inner voice, it impacts our life tremendously everyday. It can be supportive and kind or it can be very demanding and critical. We base our decisions and action on what our inner voice is saying. So depending on its tone and its advice, we might try something new or we might not take a risk and make an effort at all, because we might be afraid of the end result. We might be convinced of embarrassing ourselves, since our inner voice might be telling us: ''Oh come on, you won't succeed anyway. You've tried this before …'' Everyone has this critical inner voice, but people with low self esteem have to be particularly observant of the impact it has on their lives. As it can really create havoc in our minds and it's difficult to control it at times. So yeah, it impacts our happiness in many, many different ways on daily basis.

Klaudia: Let's move on then to maybe something practical. Let's say that I have a negative inner voice I'm struggling with a social comparison and some negative thoughts around it, which we all do a different times. How can I beging to transform my inner voice into more positive one? How I can transform it from a harsh critic into a kind friend ?

Ela: Sadly, it's not something that can be done from one day to another. As you might imagine, you need to take a step based approach here. It's not something that that can happen suddenly. So you really need to practise this skill. You need to be able to tune into your thoughts and your inner voice, especially when you're in the midst of a difficult situation so and you do that by practising self-awareness.

Step 1

Step one is having the ability to actually stop talking, stop reacting and take a step back in whatever is that we are experiencing at the moment And just being still for a moment and just listening to our thoughts. Remember that whatever you are going through you can always ask yourselves a question, ''What is going through my head right now? This question is quite powerful because it's giving us ability to examine our thoughts… As opposed to is this good for me or is it not good for me? So by asking this question we're almost separating ourselves from deciding on anything just by asking why is going through my head right now, 

Step 2 

Step two is the ability to hear that voice. What is that voice saying? 

Step 3 

Step three is saying out loud what your inner voice is saying, and by doing so becoming more aware of that phrase and noticing how self-destructive it might be. Uless we say it out loud, we might not realise how horribly negative it sounds.

Step 4

Step four is consciously rewriting what you said. Once you heard that critical statement try to take a softer tone and a kinder tone and say something a little bit kinder, a little bit more positive. You're not going to be able to go from one extreme to the other and sound super supportive suddenly, but you will be able to give a counter argument which sounds more supportive and if you practise this on daily or even weekly basis you will slowly build ability and the skill through serve observation to start rewriting your negative self talk into into more supportive one which is ……


Klaudia: Wow, fascinating. I really like that you're giving us a really practical steps here because you know what? I personally, many times won't notice the inner voice too. I have a negative emotion in my body. And I think that's quite interesting that I personally use the kind of emotional reaction I have. A body sensation starts that I'm able to spot on, and then I'm thinking, OK, why am I getting upset or why I'm getting stressed? My stomach is telling me that something is out of order and then I will think ohh, I actually said to myself something that is increasing my worry. I said to myself to myself something that is very catastrophic or as you said really negative.  That is the reason why I'm feeling that way. Our inner voice is so ingrained in us that sometimes it's difficult to notice it. 

Ela: Lots of the time  the way we often talk to ourselves is like we talk to someone we hate, quite frankly. We don't talk to another person like that ever, unless they really upset us or  really hurt us. And even in then we many of us actually quite go quite shy and quiet and don't know what to say. Whereas towards ourselves we have no problem being super critical and, and that is unfortunately that is very, very wrong.

Klaudia: Yes, absolutely. But once we have a very positive inner voice, how can we really take advantage of it and don't be swayed by things that are happening around us of what we should be doing if we thinking about something else or something else is important to us.

Ela: So I won't lie to you, Claudia. It's a real skill. Not many people can do it, to be quite honest with you. But if you look at the most successful people or those who found real balance in life and have a good income and mastered whatever is that they're doing, there's a big chance that majority of them know how to do it.  I love to say this quote. I'm just gonna start from this answering your question.  ''Opinion is the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability and no understanding. And the highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another world. '' Why am I quoting this? I'm quoting this because, like you rightly stated, we live in the world full of loud noises full of opinions, feedback, reviews, likes.
We live our life to to a huge degree through social media these days.
Sometimes I'm swayed by others and their opinions, especially if their voices are loud.  That happens to me too,  for example my husband's voice is much louder than mine. Sometimes I feel like I want to say something, but I'm not given opportunity to say what I want to say. But actually sometimes that that is working to my advantage.

Because while I'm not reacting, when somebody else talks a lot at me, perhaps not to me but at me, I am in my head already having a conversation with myself, which goes along the lines.  '' Is this worth responding to? Is what I'm supposed to say going to work to my advantage on my disadvantage? So I'm building ability to have a conversation with myself and actually not letting anybody know about this conversation, which is hugely beneficial, I find.

It happens so often that other people take over the stage and they want us to run with their show, as I call it. And I think marriages, relationships and families are and friendships are where this happens very often. And we might find that the other person has a much louder voice than us and some of us are more susceptible to listening to the opinion of other people and going with it. So often we completely forget about taking this step back and having a think, ''is this really something that I want to do?'' , '' What is going through my head right now?'' But like with everything else, this takes practise and it's about developing self trust and self-awareness and therefore tuning into that inner voice. It's a smart way of prioritising your own needs and not going with what's convenient for other people.

Klaudia: Yes, absolutely. And I think this is so, so important, that cheque in, because I personally think it's allowing ourselves a moment to do that checking to cheque in with our values right. And feeling like, is this is what's important to me, is this is what I truly want. I think then we can go back to our values that really could be our compass of when it comes to those choices that we making so important. But I guess we cannot move into that step before we know that the inner voice is very supportive of who we are and what we want to achieve in life. What is your final advice to our listeners?

Ela: Start transforming that inner voice to our advantage, sure. And I would say try working on developing self-awareness, if you haven't already. Self-awareness is something that is is is going to be a massive benefit, a massive strength to your character and it will bring advantages to your daily life. Once you have the self-awareness, think about what your inner voice is like. How do you speak to yourself when others don't listen?

Learn to take time for yourself and be still. That really helps. Once you are still and feeling balanced you're going to see is your voice likely to be gentle and supportive or does it  criticise you and sound really harsh? Always try to pay attention how you talk about yourself and your skills, your goals and how does the tone of your voice sound? Because remember, how are others supposed to believe in us if we don't believe in ourselves to start with, right? How are other people supposed to buy from us, buy our services or products? If we think deep inside we are not worth that sale or we can't do it, we are not good enough. So it's really important to learn to take control over this inner critic, because we are capable of much more when our voice is kind and soft and supportive rather than harsh and demanding. And also always try speaking to yourself as if you were speaking to your best friend. You know, because you do have yourself for the rest of your life. Other people might come and go, but you were going to stay with yourself, so it's only.

And with that note, I hope this will be a smooth journey for you and you will enjoy it.