Your Inner Critic Can Lead You to Success
Words by Erin Barber
I, like every woman on this planet, have that nasty internal dialogue that is led by self-doubt and all of his friends.
You know, the one that goes: “Are you kidding? Those pants are way too tight! God, why is my stomach so flabby?! Okay, no bread for me today. Yeah, that guy over there is totally giving you the stink eye. He obviously thinks you’re ugly. He probably thinks you’re stupid too. Ooof, someone has BO! Wait is it me? Oh god, what if it’s me? Make sure to only take one scoop of mashed potatoes. You don’t want people to think you’re a pig. You know what, just eat the salad and maybe a little bit of meat. Oh my god, why did I give that answer in my lecture? That was so dumb. And the professor thought it totally didn’t make sense. Yup, now he hates you. He knows you don’t belong in this class. Just keep your mouth shut next time.”
Yup, that’s the one.
It’s that exact voice that has me feeling self-conscious most of the time. Spending so much time analyzing and worrying about what others think or how they will judge me. Choosing not to do something that might be me happy because of how others might react or speak rudely about me behind my back.
When you spend so much time with the unpleasant company in your head, it’s easy to scrutinize every little thing as a personal attack. Fight or flight mode engages and it feels impossible to get to a happy place.
And so it went that afternoon in the airport.
A sour-faced, scowling woman sat next to me as we waited at our gate. She was something around the latter part of middle-aged. Brown, wiry hair parted down the middle. Skin that looked nourished and moist but heavy from the weight of her lifetime. She was slight, trim, in her white blouse and khakis. But all of that was no match for the unpleasantness of her expression.
She sat there staring at me, her narrowed eyes aimed like daggers. The energy was so thick, that you could almost see the red heat radiating from her skin.
Cue my internal dialogue.
“Oh great, here we go. What is it now? What did I do? The woman has a major problem with me. Just…eyes forward. Don’t look. No! Don’t look. Oh you looked, didn’t you? Crap. Is she still looking? Dammit. What should I do? Should I move? Ehhh, I, ugh. She’s probably super racist and just wants to get her point across that she just hates me and hates Black people and just really wants to get her hate across. Yeah, I get it lady. Okay, cool you hate me can you please just look somewhere else? Can this plane please just get going. OHMYGODNO what if our seats are next to each other?! Oh my god, no, I’ll die.”
She starts to shake her head ever so slightly from side-to-side. And then she leans in towards me, her face closer to mine now.
“Excuse me,” she says. “I can’t — I don’t believe it … but you look just like my granddaughter.”
I wish I could write a sentence that accurately described the look of shock that flashed across my face, but I can’t. There are no words for my surprise and confusion in that moment.
She continues, “My daughter and son-in-law just adopted my granddaughter … from Ethiopia.”
I’m still just stunned and silent.
“It’s like looking 17 years into the future. You look just like her. It’s unreal,” her head bobbing. She continues to stare, her eyes enormous, trying to absorb my face through her pupils.
I’m silent and so is the voice in my head. And then I jolt back to life and a smile beams between my cheeks. What I had interpreted as stares of hatred turned out to be stares of disbelief. And yet, my subconscious voice ran and ran and ran in the worst possible direction.
It’s true—in the past I’ve been judged negatively, as we all have, for our looks, our body type, our choice of clothing, our hair style, what we say, how we behave. We’re judged for the entirety of our being. And also, for just being. It is these judgments that fuel that cruel inner voice and lead us to be self-conscious to the point of self-sabotage.
But here was a woman, a loving grandmother who saw her granddaughter in me. It was so pure and heartwarming. It was one of those magical blissful moments of humanity.
I was so self-conscious when she was staring at me. Yes, she probably should have dialed it down a notch, but I should have shrugged it off. Because being self-conscious and letting these destructive inner dialogues run wild just doesn’t do any good.
My point is, people are going to judge you no matter what, but you should not judge yourself through their shattered lens…and you never know what someone is actually thinking about you until you ask.
The woman in the airport that day turned out to be a delighted grandparent, although she could have just as easily been a judgmental bigot.
And either way, I’d still be here. I’m still standing. And still trying to train the inner voice in my head to speak to me with kindness, courage and love. So that I am able to live my life to the fullest, not shrinking from self-consciousness.
The goal is to be able to harness your internal conversation and use any doubts you may have to fuel a mission or passion. Turning poison into medicine. Something that acclaimed author and novelist, Zadie Smith, knows all too well.
Growing up with a physical and mental duality as the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant and a White, British father, Smith admits that the process of finding her identity was wrought with self-doubt and confusion.
After her parents split, she grew up in London estates (i.e. subsidized housing) but tried to redefine her identity when she “went up” that is, when she enrolled at Cambridge. Smith hailed from a working-class neighborhood but decided to assume a different voice when she started at the university. Perhaps out of fear that her “old” voice would not be acceptable in her new environment, with her new peers.
She claims that at the beginning she was able to keep her “old” voice and “new” voice alive together. She used them interchangeably, depending on the time and place. But like all things driven by doubt and self-consciousness, they simply cannot last against the harsh realities of growing up and out.
And to Smith’s regret, her “new” voice eventually defeated the “old” one. She sacrificed a part of her identity to outside forces and external pressures that were the root of her self criticism. At the wobbles in her identity.
But out of her lack of self-confidence, she bore White Teeth, one of the greatest novels of the modern era. It was the inner critic, the inner drive that led her complete her major work.
On the subject, she is quoted with saying, “It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone…Other people’s words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write.”
She claims if she didn’t have some level of self-consciousness within her psyche, she probably wouldn’t have written to the quality and degree that she has.
And isn’t that true? Though the pain of past experiences can cause us to become unkind or even cruel to ourselves, it is a secret striving to do better and be better that can drive us to amazing achievements.
So again, harness the conversation swirling in your mind. It will probably always be there to some degree so use it for your own gain.
You really never know what others are thinking or will think. They may receive you, your being and your work much better than the voice in your head.
About the Author:
Erin is a life-liver, writer, innovator, and dreamer with an immense love for people, storytelling, music, and dogs. She lives in Germany and has a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in Film, Media, English and Communication and an MBA in Media Management from Cardiff University in Wales.
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