Meeting Our Inner Critic With love

If we're in a time where it feels like things are hard,

Where the crisis,

Real or perceived,

Feels like it's threatening to,

Or has already entered our life in some way,

Then this love,

This recognition of our own strengths,

Skills,

Knowledge,

Wisdom,

Learnings and growth becomes even more important.

When we don't stop to raise our own awareness of the progress that we have made in some way,

Then we can become stuck in only seeing what we haven't done,

Or only seeing the mistakes that we've made and not recognising them as experiments that have led to some other outcome.

And there are so many ways that we can practice self-compassion,

But it feels to me that this is something that is really practical.

So the important thing here is to ask that inner critic to just step aside for a moment as we do this work,

Not to tell them to shut up or to try and ignore them or suppress them,

But just to notice them,

To acknowledge they're there,

Acknowledge what they're saying,

And then just ask if they'll step aside while we do this exercise of acknowledgement.

And to talk to that inner critic with love and this way of speaking to ourselves,

Our self-talk,

It becomes part of this practice of love in a time of crisis.

So how do we do it?

How can we do this acknowledgement?

Because for so many of us it feels deeply awkward and uncomfortable to acknowledge our own successes.

And again I say that not in a striving way,

But just in a like whatever success means for each of us individually and it will be individual.

How do we do it?

Because so often we've learned along the way we're carrying a story that in some way limits our ability to be able to practice this art of self- acknowledgement,

Self-appreciation,

Self-love.

And again I'm sort of noticing a sort of question maybe arising in our minds around what is this narcissism,

You know,

And of course if we spend our whole time just going I'm so beautiful,

Everything about me is so amazing,

I never make any mistakes,

You know,

That can slip down into a narcissistic mindset.

But that's not what this is.

This is simply about stepping back and looking at the evidence that's in front of us and not with a kind of shroud over the top of it that prevents us from seeing the good stuff that's sitting in there.

In a way I think that's,

You know,

That kind of negativity bias can be,

Well not in a way,

It is as damaging as narcissism.

So just noticing what thoughts are coming up inside you as you're listening to me is part of the practice,

You know,

Do you feel a resistance to doing this and if so that's okay,

Turn toward that part and just ask that part just to gently step back just while you do this exercise and treat it as an experiment,

Everything's an experiment.

So what are some of the practical ways that we can do this?

One is to ask a friend,

Someone that you really really trust,

To hold space as you reflect and it needs to be someone who's not going to wade in and try and fix you or in their own,

You know,

Bringing their own experience to bear,

Not start to kind of criticize or judge in some way what you're sharing.

So it needs to be a trusted friend or a coach,

You know,

Someone who can talk with you with dispassionate compassion.

Another approach can be to ask a trusted friend or friends to share their own reflections,

Observations of what they see are your achievements and I mean that can be an act of bravery in itself but can also yield such beautiful outcomes because so often others can see things that we are blinkered from seeing because of our own limiting beliefs,

Our own stories that we carry about ourselves and you can even ask people to write it down and send it to you if it feels a bit too much to ask them face to face or a lovely way of doing it would be to go for a walk,

Let them know that you're going to ask them for some reflections and go for a walk.

It's often much easier to have these kind of deeper conversations when we're not looking each other face to face particularly if we're not feeling sort of fully kind of confident about it because it just creates a slightly different container for psychological safety.

So there are a couple of options.

Another really useful one is to write down everything either in the form of journaling and to just to really let it spill onto the page so all the things that you've completed,

The things you've experimented with and the things that you've abandoned,

That you've moved on from because getting rid of things that no longer serve us can be a major cause for celebration.

You know not seeing those things as failures but as deeper awareness.

So for me one of my personal examples of that was about ten years ago I set up and ran a business that made and I designed and then had made in the UK a whole range of really beautiful kitchen linens called Cooking Gorgeous and I ran the business for three years but for lots and lots of reasons.

It just wasn't the right thing for me,

The timing wasn't great and it was hard to make the decision to close it down but I know that I brought a huge amount of learning from that time and I brought a huge amount of learning from the decision to close it down because I know it was the right thing for me and funnily enough actually I've just found all the messages I'd kept from people who'd loved the products that I'd created and I've just deleted them so in a way I've just had like the last bit of closure on it so it's quite funny that that's come up as I've been talking here now.

So just journaling,

Writing,

You know free flow,

Not worrying about grammar,

Spelling,

Paragraphs and just write what are all the things that you have achieved over the last however long the period of time is that you want to look at and then another really beautiful thing and this is something that I'm going to do actually is to draw a map of your own journey.

So to cut pictures or words from magazines,

Maybe to draw little you know icons that represent certain things for you or little pictures and you know and to draw to draw that journey that kind of chronological journey of all the things that have happened along the way and my reflection when I was thinking about this is actually I'm going to really acknowledge the staging posts of self-care and self-awareness and self-compassion that have contributed to me being in this place that I am in today and I just think that that will be useful for me to have that to look back on if I get into a bit of a wobble place which obviously does happen we all we all have our wobble places and and just to be able to see gosh all of those things and even as I've been thinking about it and reflecting on it before starting it lots of stuff has been coming through that's just made me go oh god I did that or I had that conversation or yeah I can see how that led to that so I think that's a really beautiful thing and there's something very very powerful about creating something visual as well.

So there's four routes where we can do this we can do this practice of acknowledgement asking a friend to hold space asking friend trusted friends to share their reflections to journal in a freeform way and then to draw a map of our journey and it really depends on what kind of thinker and what kind of reflector we each are so I'm a verbal thinker I find my deeper thoughts my belly thoughts as I explore the words that spill from my mouth and I'm also a writer thinker so I love journaling and I'm experimenting with my visual thinking too so that idea of doing the map feels very exciting to me now and you know maybe maybe I will do that the second one as well about asking some trusted friends to share their reflections observations of what they've seen about my journey or about my achievements you know it feels a bit scary but it's also ultimately I know is a really helpful process so I offer those up and I would love to to hear your reflections on what has served you and what feels useful for you here and I've really consciously called this episode love in a time of crisis because going back to what I was saying earlier when we are surrounded by challenging things whether they are geographically distant or they are happening in the world around us but not necessarily or in our local environment but they're not necessarily impacting us we can still be deeply deeply impacted by them of course of course of course of course we can you know that energy it threads through everything and so this practice of love this practice of self appreciation is a way of responding to that negative energy that we might be noticing and really sending that love to ourselves and in that way also sending it out into the world because when we feel calm when we feel recognized when we feel seen then it's much easier for us to show up in the world in our fullest and most shiny way you