How to deal with your inner critic
You start a new task—and immediately a voice says: “You won’t succeed.” You set a goal—and right away convince yourself it’s unattainable. You see someone else’s success—and say: “That’s definitely not about me.” And when something really doesn’t work out, you find a thousand reasons but forget the main one: from the start, you endlessly criticized yourself.
This state destroys confidence, firmness, and self-love. As a result, any action is accompanied by doubts and nitpicking. If nothing changes, self-criticism gradually burns away health and leads to a life that is not your own, to alien decisions, and to sinking deeper into insecurity.
The heaviest responsibility one can take on is planting doubts inside oneself. It’s easier to pay with money. Think about it: would you pay a million dollars to buy yourself doubt about whether you love your child? Or doubt about whether your family loves you? Of course not. But that is exactly where inner criticism leads: it steals the most important thing—your state.
The first step: honestly assess the level
Ask yourself: “How self-critical am I on a scale from 0 to 10?”, where 0 means self-criticism doesn’t arise at all, and 10 means you destroy yourself every day with thoughts and doubts.
You often hear: “Self-criticism is useful, it helps you grow.” But it’s important to separate healthy critical analysis from destructive self-criticism. Analysis helps to understand cause and effect. Self-criticism leads toward apathy and doubts.
Example: a person wants to start a business but postpones it for years. They think: “I won’t manage.” The reasons may be several:
- inner fear;
- or the business truly isn’t needed, and intuition is signaling that.
Here it’s important to distinguish: did you stop because of doubts—or because the direction really isn’t right for you? Many decisions we didn’t carry out turned out to be the right ones precisely because we didn’t need them.
Another situation exists. Sometimes a person makes a great step but doesn’t feel joy. Why?
There are two key questions:
Why did I do it?
If it was to prove something to others, then joy won’t come. This is action from a state of substitution.
Did I really solve the task?
If the result didn’t bring inner relief and meaning, perhaps the goal itself was false.
There is also the situation with new opportunities. A new chance appears: a job, a business, a partnership. But the inner critic immediately whispers: “You won’t cope.” The reasons can be different: past failures; other people’s imposed attitudes (“you won’t succeed”); the habit of doubting everything.
To work through this, look honestly: how do you criticize others? Notice how many times a day you thought or said that someone is “talentless” or “won’t manage.” This habit comes back to you like a mirror.
Mistakes and responsibility
Many are afraid to admit a mistake. They are overcome by shame, a desire to hide. But this is just escape from responsibility. There are two paths:
Unhealthy—shame, apathy, refusal to admit the fact.
Healthy—calm acceptance of the mistake and readiness to take responsibility for it.
Mistakes are a part of life. They are not a catastrophe. It’s important to calmly admit: “Yes, I made a mistake. And I am ready to take responsibility.” If a state arises where you want to hide, that means you are absolutely not ready to take responsibility.
You can defeat the inner critic only through honest living:
- seeing where you replace reality with doubts;
- distinguishing false goals from true ones;
- being able to rejoice in what you’ve done;
- admitting mistakes and taking responsibility.
The absence of self-criticism is possible if you move toward true development, live by values and the laws of the world, not in a constant race for external validation. And if you have this state, this dissatisfaction, then you are simply (or not simply)—you are on some kind of path.