The harder I tried silencing my inner critic, the more agitated it became. I felt annoyed, why couldn’t I be confident like other people seemed to be? Why did trying to include myself in my writing, like I did in classroom teaching, make me so nervous. Why was I so afraid to disappoint my learners?
My inability to tame my inner critic made me feel confused and annoyed. Until I had a mini-breakthrough.
When I was racing my 8.8 metre yacht, the worst time was the 30 minutes before the race start. I would feel sick and start to worry about what could go wrong. Was the spinnaker properly packed so that it would leap out of its bag and fly precisely when we needed it. Were all the ropes all tidy so we wouldn’t have any tangles when we were under way.
All these things would race through my mind until they all got jammed up and made my body feel sick. My self identity and my ability to lead was in tatters.
About this time I was able to talk to a man who was at the top of his success as an international yachtsman.
I learned from him that my self-identity is not defined by what I do or what I can’t do. My spirit, my enthusiasm, my drive was still there, it just manifested itself differently.
I was still me.
And I couldn’t allow my inner critic to define who I was either. That worry-wort of a voice wasn’t me. The real me had been subdued.
I learned to make peace with my inner critic. To accept that she was only telling me I was scared. And sometimes she was telling me I was unprepared, I learned to observe her, to work with her.
Fighting your inner voice is a lonely battle
You feel ashamed of your uncertainity, your stupidity, your lack of confidence.
You wonder why everyone else is so much more competent than you. Why do they seem to breeze through life with so much ease? Why do they build their business without fear? How can they publish their work without hesitation?
When I started to write this article for Vickie, I had a sleepless night. The next morning I put what I had written in a drawer, and rewrote most of it.
But why am I even worried about this?
I’ve learned that being honest about self-doubt makes me feel stronger not weaker.
Write it, don’t fight it.