In the post Self-talk is worth understanding, we offered two resources to address the inner self-talk that sometimes occupies and weakens our thinking. Dan Rockwell assertively approaches this topic by giving the inner critic a persona. He says, “Your inner critic believes you’re a failure and wants you to stay that way.”
Various resources state humans have as many as 70,000 thoughts per day. When the inner critic is “talking” it is estimated that nearly 80 percent of that “talk” is negative. Rockwell reminds us, “Inner critics love last time and hate next time.” Tip: Don’t allow your inner finger-pointer to make judgments about who you are, even if it might be right about your performance.
Source: Leadership Freak, September 19, 2016.
An inner finger-pointer comes from two places. Inner critics are the imagined voice of accusing authority figures and negative family members from the past. The other place your inner critic speaks from is perfectionism.
INSIGHTS: A Google search of this topic yields a large body of works created to address this self-talk subject. If you hear voices saying, “you can’t,” or, “you’ll never,” consider digging into the topic. Time spent learning to manage your inner critic is valuable.