Silence the Inner Critic in minutes: Unlock Confidence and Productivity

1. Introduction: The inner critic is so disrespectful, y'all. It interferes with your confidence. It interferes with your productivity, and it actually keeps you stuck. But you can silence the inner critic. Stick with me, and I'll show you how. Hello. My name is Tony Hand, and I'm a licensed clinical therapist and a self care coach. In my practice, I deal with clients that deal with so many fears and doubts, and it keeps them stuck. And a lot of times that we don't realize it's the Im critic that's doing it. It can come from experiences from childhood type you have, things that people have told you, parents, friends, siblings, whomever. But it's something that has been told to you a long time ago. T that you take on as a person of belief for yourself. It can hold it can stay with you for very long time. And it doesn't ever who that person is. The more significant the person, the more it stays with you. For instance, if it's a parent, if it's a boss, if it's a husband or spouse of sorts, then we tend to cut and stick a little bit more when it's someone that means a lot to us. What I want to do is to teach you how to refrain that so you can overcome it and not allow yourself to cave into the fears, and to the doubts. We don't realize what's keeping track in our minds and not being able to move forward to being productive. Is the in c. 2. Understanding the Inner Critics Voice: H The inner critic develops over time through a combination of external influences, experiences and some learned behavior. It often starts like in our childhood as we internalize messages from the world around us, and including our family and friends and teachers, peers, and generally just society. Let's give an example of what the inner critic looks like. Imagine you're at work, and you're preparing for a presentation, and you hear this voice inside of your head saying, you are not good enough. You're going to fail. Why are you standing here? People, the public is going to laugh at you. Like Carrie. They're gonna laugh at you. I just got Carrie in my mind. They're gonna laugh at you. In some way, the inner critic act as a misguided form of self protection. It tries to shield you from failure, embarrassment, or rejection by discouraging risk taking, or pushing you to avoid situations where you just might fall short or just fail. However, instead of building resilience, this often results in lower confidence and missed opportunities, not taking the risk or chance to just do something outside of your comfort zone for fear of failure. The inner critics job is to make you feel small, make you believe that you're not capable. When we understand the inner critics origin is the first step to challenge and silencing the inner critic, allowing for us you to develop a healthier and more supportive self talk. 3. Challenge Negative Thoughts: Inner critic. We now want to challenge the inner critic. Yeah. We're standing up to the inner critic. The one that tries to protect us, we have to now stand up against it and tell it, silence yourself. You do not take over me. I control you. You don't control me. How do we do that by challenging the negative thoughts? It's through the reframing exercises that we learn to do this. You question the validity of whether or not this inner critic is true, if it's valid, if it's real. Is it? Are you not a great public speaker? Are you not a great dancer? Are you not a skier? Are you not a wonderful book writer? Are you not a publicist? Are you not a great actress? So the inner critic says, I'm going to challenge the validity of what you're saying is true? So we're questioning whether or not it's true, right? So we say to ourselves, if you are a skier, many times have people told you you're a wonderful skier? If you're a writer, how many things have you written that a person says to you that this writing is wonderful? How many times have a person said to you that the writing is terrible. More often than not, we look at the negatives of a situation as opposed to looking at the positives in a situation, because I'm sure that far more people will tell you that you're a wonderful author than not. You may get 50 people to say your writing is fantastic? One person to say, Oh, you can tweak this or that or do this or that or X Y and Z. Then the majority rules in this particular situation? You actually are a writer. You can silence the inner critic by saying that to yourself. Yeah, you know what? The validity of the situation is not correct. It's not true. I have far more people who tell me that I'm a wonderful writer. I'm a wonderful speaker, a wonderful skier. I'm a wonderful attorney. I'm fantastic at what I do. Then not, 50 to one, but we tend to go to that one person who says a negative thing about us, right? Isn't it how it works? 4. Reframe Mistakes as Learning Opportunity: In this lesson, this chapter, we're going to explore how our mindsets shape our confidence and success and how we can turn what often sees as a failure into powerful learning. Hence reframing. Inner critic comes in, and it often does, as we know, to challenge us, to protect us. What we're going to do is reframe the inner critic. Basically, when the inner critic shows up to say, you're not that great at something, reframe the thought to say, I will succeed at this because I've succeeded in the past, so I will succeed again. That's all reframing is. It's basically turning the negative thought into a positive out. A fixed mindset is when we believe that our intelligence, talents, or abilities are like set in stone. This way of thinking often leads to the thoughts like, I'm just not good at this or I'm a failure. That means I'm a failure. When we think this way, we avoid challenges and fears and making mistakes, and ultimately limiting our own growth as what we learned in the previous chapter. But here's the good news. A fixed mindset isn't permanent. We can shift it to what's called a growth mindset. A growth mindset means you believe that you can improve and grow through hard work, learning and the persistence. Instead of thinking, I'm not good at this, a growth mindset would say, I'm not good at this yet, but I can learn and get better over time. It's about embracing challenges and seeing mistakes not as proof or failure, but as a valuable opportunity to just grow. Let's take a moment to do the reframing exercise. Sheet of paper, take a moment and reflect on the project that you want to create for yourself. The thing that you want to do, write it down and ask yourself, what's stopping me from moving forward with this? What thoughts am I telling myself that I cannot do? Instead of saying I'm going to fail, reframe the thought to say, I will succeed at this because I've succeeded in the past, so I will succeed again. I have the gifts, the talent, and the ability to do my best and to do it well. When you practice reframing failures and shifting to a growth mindset, you begin to see challenges as opportunities, not obstacles. This shift will transform the way you approach life and your goals, and it will silence that inner critic. That's always trying to hold you back. It doesn't let up. You have to silence the inner critic. 5. Practice Self-compassion: One of the most powerful tools for silencing the inner critic, self compassion. If you've ever felt like you're too hard on yourself or that your inner voice is more critical than kind, this lesson is definitely for you. Self compassion means treating yourself with the same kindness, care, and understanding that you would offer to someone you care about. Yet, like, for so many of us, we find it easier to be compassionate with others than to ourselves. Instead, we tend to be our own worst critics. Think about it. If a close friend came to you feeling down or upset about making mistake, what would you say to them? Reminding them of their strength and assuring them that mistakes are part of life. But when it comes to ourselves, we often go straight into criticism, saying things like, I'm such a failure or I'll never get this right. That's where self compassion comes in. It's about flipping the script, guys, learning to talk to ourselves with the same patience and kindness we give to someone else that we care about. We're going to consider worst case scenario, right? Like me, for instance, being up here, public speaking. I'm a therapist. I'm used to speaking in public, but this is my first time being on skill share. So I risk being embarrassed. I risk public scrutiny. I risk criticism and judgment, right? So I had to silence the inner critic and say, no, this is what I do, and it's okay. It's my first recording physical share, and so if it's not perfect, it's okay. It's progress over perfection. It means that I continued to go forward, I continue to produce, and I continue to perfect in areas that need improvement. That's all that means. Think about a recent situation where you were hard on yourself. Close your eyes for a moment and picture it now. Imagine what would you say to a close friend if they were in the same situation. What kind of supporting words would you offer to them? Once you've thought of something, try turning those words towards yourself. Say them out loud. I'm doing my best. It's okay to make a mistake. I'll keep learning and improving. 6. Final Thoughts: Overall summary of this is to first identify what your inner critic saying to you. Yes, and write it down. Then you want to challenge it. See if it's valid. Or not. If it's not valid, you move forward with positivity and telling yourself wonderful things about who you are and what you're capable of. And practice every day, self compassion and self care. I really hope that you enjoy this course, and I really hope to hear more about your productivity and how you refrained your exercises, how you refrain your inner critic so moving forward and getting unstuck. Thank you so much. Look forward to seeing your wonderful awesomeness in the community section.