If you have a voice inside you telling you that you are incapable of success, you are not alone. It affects many, many people. Psychologists call it the “internal critic” or the “critical internal voice.” Sometimes it can force you to quit. Sometimes it reinforces the worst of your self-doubts. It screams, “you are a failure.” In truth, I have made that voice work for me. It is the reason I push so hard for success. If I fail, then the voice has free rein to say that I am terrible. So, I work very hard.
I will say though, that there are no set of accomplishments that can make it stop. There are not enough diplomas out there to make it go away. There is no amount of success that will make the critic think you are rich enough. There is no amount of weight loss that can make the critic think you are good looking enough. There is no external accomplishment or success that will bring the voice of the internal critic to a permanent stop.
External accomplishments and successes eventually get worn down in the face of the constancy of the internal critic. So if the answer to dealing with your internal critic is not success, then what is it?
First, refuse to give in to self-abuse. Have you ever thought about yourself, “how could you be so stupid,” “you are never going to amount to anything,” “you are such an idiot,” or “you are so fat”? For many people, those kinds of thoughts affect them any time they make a mistake or things did not turn out right for them. Consider though, what you would do if someone were saying that to your child. If you heard someone speaking to your child that way you would force it to stop, immediately. If you heard someone speaking to your spouse or significant other that way, you would intervene immediately. Even if it was a co-worker speaking to you that way, you would act decisively to bring it to an end. What you would not do is tolerate it. Strange how we would stop someone from using abusive language on our loved ones and how we would not tolerate someone using abusive language on us, but we tolerate our own internal voice saying the most destructive things to us. The first step is to simply stop tolerating it. When the voice occurs simply reply, “leave me alone. I have had enough of that today.” Then move on.
Secondly, recognize that the voice is just a thought. Thoughts only have the power that we give to them. So, give it no power. If you can, wave the thoughts off. They are simply worthless. After a while of disciplined waving off, the inner critic can be quieted, at least for a while.
When it does reemerge, it is crucial to treat it with the same no-tolerance policy that you treated it with previously. If you give it a foothold, it will return to make mischief. When it does reoccur, simply start waving it off again. If you refuse to give it space, it eventually loses power.
Lastly, recognize something about yourself, you belong to God. The internal critic is a master at undermining self-worth. Because so many of us build our self-worth by external accomplishments and by comparing ourselves with others, we set ourselves up to overwhelmed by our inner critic at our first mistake or failure. Our value has nothing to do with our appearance, accomplishments, success, or status. Our value has to do with being loved by an Eternal God. God loves us as we are. There is nothing that needs to be done for us to be more loved by Him and no failure can make Him love us less. Setting our value on our eternal worth to God makes it unimpeachable. Knowing our worth to God is the best weapon against the inner critic.
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