Many of us may hear voices in our heads – our intuitions or internalized voices can positive and nurturing, but many may be less kind. One such ‘voice’ is the Inner Critic, or the Voice of Judgment, the voice that tells you, ‘You aren’t good enough,’ ‘You shouldn’t do it this way,’ or ‘You can’t succeed.’
GlobalLeadership.TV founder Walter Link explores the evolutionary significance of the Inner Critic – WHY our Inner Critics develop, how the Inner Critic maintains the status quo, and how we can work with the Inner Critic to open ourselves to clearer discernment to do more innovative and creative problem-solving.
How can we reflect on the nature of the Inner Critic to release ourselves from unproductive self-judgment? How can work with the Inner Critic help us break free of the status quo? Watch the full practice HERE.
The status quo is the main concern of the Inner Critic.
Walter Link:
The status quo is the main concern of the Inner Critic – because it needs to support the person to fit in to the particular micro or macro culture that has its own homeostasis, balance, way of being. And even if there is an instruction to change, that change often maintains the same way the Inner Critic talks to us. So it may change the outsides of our lives, but at the same time it maintains the insides of our lives, which we could call our identity, a strong part of how we recognize ourselves.
The Inner Critic is very ambivalent about us changing our identity, or developing further. You may notice that you have had a deep insight, or have an important experience, and that you have out of that an intention to behave differently. And when circumstances are good, you are able to do things differently, to be more open and go beyond an old identity.
When pressure increases, you may notice that you move back, how suddenly the Inner Critic dominates again and you move back into an old way of behaving…
But when the pressure increases, when there is a crisis, when there are difficulties you may notice that you move back, how suddenly the Inner Critic, which is there in a certain way to help you survive in social circumstances, kind of dominates again and you move back into an old way of identifying yourself, into an old way of behaving. Then you often also find that there isn’t only judgment, but there is doubt, fear, insecurity, lack of energy, and tiredness. All these create impacts that keep you from moving forward.
Now, beyond these limitations we have to recognize that in order to have a functioning society and civilization, we need rules. We need not only explicit laws, but ways that are deeply ingrained of how we live out these laws, these principles. While all of these can be limiting to creativity and innovation and bringing about the next step in evolutionary development, they are also important to keep us from chaos, lawlessness and a lot of difficulties that you can see in civil wars, wars, when all rules collapse. When people are so impacted by their survival instincts that they just do whatever they are compelled to. So outside in the world, but also inside our selves, this Inner Critic actually provides a limiting but also useful role until we are able to develop better alternatives.
The alternative to limiting judgment that clouds our perception is a clear discernment that is objective, open to feedback, that is even open to criticism from the outside.
The alternative to having a limiting judgment that clouds our perception would be to have a clear discernment that is objective, that is open to feedback, that is even open to criticism from the outside, but strips away all the extras, the emotional extras and just looks at the picture in a clear and discerning way. A discernment that then allows for a clear, empowered thinking that can be both logical and also deeply in touch with our hearts and our bellies, with our intuition and our guidance, and that instead of this kind of manipulated, judgmental judgment, leads to a kind of real judgment that empowers good decision-making that empowers understanding what we want to do in our own development, and how we want to support the develop of the world.
So until these kind of capacities have been more and more developed in inidviduals and human systems, we also need the transitional processes, some level of the Inner Critic. We can learn to make even those standards, those past-based structures be less harmful to ourselves – less limiting and less compromising. There is a process of development, a process of transitioning, from a very unconscious to a more conscious Inner Critic – from an Inner Critic to clear discernment, clear thinking, clear guidance.
There is a process of development, a process of transitioning, from a very unconscious to a more conscious Inner Critic – from an Inner Critic to clear discernment, clear thinking, clear guidance.
Join Walter Link on GlobalLeadership.TV for an in-depth analysis of the Inner Critic – what it is, where it comes from, and how it impacts our lives. From there, Link explores how to reflect on the Inner Critic so that in the future it doesn’t prevent you from reaching your full potential with creativity and innovation.
Watch ‘Inner Critic 3 x 3 Practice’ on GlobalLeadership.TV HERE
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