How to Quiet Your Inner Critic

For such a subtle voice, it’s awfully loud -- our inner critic. It beats us down for making poor choices. It condemns us for slipping up. It negatively frames our failed attempts. And it sounds something like this:

“Why can’t you get this right already?”

“You messed up again. You’ll never make it.” 

“You let everybody else down.” 

Our health behaviors aren’t immune to this condemnation. Maybe you struggle with emotional eating. Maybe you find it difficult to exercise. Maybe you quit cigarettes for a time but have picked them back up. With each failed attempt, it becomes easier to feel down and resign ourselves to the idea that we’ll never succeed. Our inner critic reinforces that idea. 

Thankfully, there’s a way to quiet that inner critic and foster self-compassion. It involves three components:

1. Accept that the human experience inevitably involves hardship.

People everywhere experience suffering, heartache, disappointment, embarrassment, and failure. This recognition can help you be gentle and forgiving toward yourself instead of harsh and judgmental. 

2. Recognize the impact of environment on health behavior.

External influences shape our health behavior significantly, not only individual choice. Although individual decisions count, heaping full responsibility for health behavior on personal choice is unfair. For example, someone living in an area with high crime and no sidewalks or parks, will find it more difficult to take an evening walk than someone who lives in a safe neighborhood with high walkability. Recognizing environmental challenges helps us to practice self-kindness and promotes creativity in problem-solving. 

3. Practice mindfulness.

Self-compassion requires an openness to experiencing the full range of human emotion. Mindfulness allows you to take a step back and view your feelings through a nonjudgmental and observational lens. You can then leverage that experience to move forward. 

Inner criticism is counterproductive to behavior change. By silencing that criticism, these three components lay the foundation for successfully adopting new behaviors. Health coaches are trained to help you experience self-compassion as you work toward overcoming obstacles to better health and wellness.  

References:

Moore, M., Jackson, E., & Tschannen-Moran, B. (2016). Coaching Psychology Manual (2nd ed.). Wolters Kluwer.