High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 572: Your Inner Critic

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

Your inner critic is your disempowering inner voice. We all have an inner critic inside of us. We want to be aware of our inner critic to reduce it. Remember our inner critic tends to lie to us. We want to respond to our inner critic with challenging questions like a judge in a court room and choose a more empowering and truthful statement to tell ourselves instead.  This Week's Power Phrase: “I talk to myself powerful instead of listening to my inner critic.”  Quote of the Week: “Don’t beat yourself up for beating yourself up. We need to make friends with our inner critic.” Kristen Neff

Hi, friends. My name is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week, I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed, packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go. It's time once again to check in with our friend, Cinder Kampoff, and we're talking about our inner critic today. I don't think that sounds like a friend, your inner critic. Cinder, you start us off with a quote. I really like this quote by Kristen Knapp. He said, don't beat yourself up for beating yourself up. We need to make friends with our inner critic. Making friends with our inner critic. So what inspired the topic of the

inner critic for you today? Well, pacing. First, as an executive and performance coach, I work a lot with people one on one. And I hear all the ways actually that we get in our own way. And even as a keynote speaker, I ask people in the audience to identify what I call your inner limits. And these are things that get in the way of your potential within us. And people say things like negative self-talk and fear of failure and our lack of confidence. And also one way we get in our own way is this inner critic. It's really this voice inside our head that tells us that we're not enough in some way. And Lisa, what's interesting is we create

these barriers without even realizing it. For example, your inner critic might say things like, you know, I'm such an idiot, or I could have done this better, or I'm such a loser. And the thing is, we all have this inner critic within us. Well, tell us exactly what you mean by that inner critic. I think I know the voice that you're talking about. Yeah, well, really, it's this, you know, disempowering inner voice that we all have. And it can sound scared or angry or judgmental, maybe even make you procrastinate. But it's really this critical voice inside your head. Again, we all have it. But the thing is, when we believe our inner critic, it impacts our

confidence and our self-worth. It can lead to shame. And we can't really connect with our true purpose when we believe it. And our inner critic shows up in like our thoughts, our emotions and behaviors. So really, the first thing is just to notice how your inner critic shows up for you. You know, maybe it's things like you wanting to give up or being afraid to fail or not believing you're enough in some way. And, you know, I'm just going to encourage people to think about what's the impact of more of this inner cheerleader instead. What is the first step at making sure that our inner critic stays as quiet as possible?

Yeah, absolutely. The first step is just awareness. And I think that's always the first step in mastering your mind. And the key is to recognize, you know, what your inner critic is. In fact, most of our messages, almost all of our inner critic messages are just lies. And we really wanted to uncover those lies and ask ourselves, you know, what's the truth? What else could this mean? You know, what's really going on here? And then a couple of things to consider about your inner critic. It is just habitual. So, you know, you've just been thinking about this way or this similar way for a while. And just remember that most people believe their

thoughts are who they are. For example, you know, let's say your thought is I'm an average student or I'm a terrible leader. We think that we are our thoughts, but they aren't. And you can create a new thought, a new belief, and you can really work on that inner critic that you have. So if we're looking to transform this inner critic, what is one of the ways we would go about doing that? Well, ask yourself, what is a new belief that you want to create? So what do you want to think? And we want our new belief to be realistic, you know, something your brain will believe. I think about habitual thoughts kind of like plants. We want to, you know, we want to stop watering them to grow. And so we wanted to create some new, more powerful plants. And a way to kind

of think about that as a good place to start is just with an I am statement. So just think what are, you know, what are ways that you are good enough? And then I think the key is to practice those new beliefs and habits. Find ways that those new beliefs are true. And just a thought repeated over time becomes a belief. A thought repeated over time becomes a belief. I like that one. Just as long as you're putting something good in there. What else do you suggest that we do when

we have this inner critic that we're recognizing? I think what else you can do is just be careless with that inner critic and just ask yourself, you know, to start noticing when does your critic go into overdrive? What triggers your inner critic? You know, what happens to your body and your emotions when you listen and believe your inner critic? And again, what happens to your body and your emotions when you listen and believe your inner critic? And again, the first step is just to be aware and start challenging those messages. You know, what really is the truth? What's more empowering? What could really help you step into your potential more?

And so how would you summarize today for us? I would summarize by saying your inner critic is your disempowering inner voice, and we all have it within us. We want to be aware of our inner critic to reduce its power over us. And remember that your inner critic tends to lie to you. So we want to respond to your inner critic more with challenging questions. I think about it like a judge in a courtroom, you know, really being able to notice those thoughts and just really saying, are these really true? And tell yourself a more truthful thought. Cinder, you usually leave us with a power phrase, something that we can repeat to ourselves to help us remember the lesson for today.

What is the power phrase? I talk to myself powerfully instead of listening to my inner critic. Talk to yourself powerfully. And Cinder, if we want to follow along with what you're doing, some of your works, grab your books, where do we best go to find you? You can head over to Dr. Sindra, so drcindra.com and everything about the podcast and the book fair headed over there. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and

to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.