deepstash
Beta
How to Fight off Your Inner Critic
Life's a struggle for everyone.
Stop comparing what you know of your deep self to the shallow front others advertise about their lives.
Everyone seems to know how to live, but you don't. However, you don't know. We may decide what to tell and what to hide. A few people may appear to have perfect lives, but only because you don't know them well enough.
498 SAVES
This is a professional note extracted from an online article.
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
IDEA EXTRACTED FROM:
8
Key Ideas
Your inner critic
We almost all have a character inside our minds that tends to visit us late at night when we're very tired, telling us terrible things in order to destroy our self-confidence and self-compassion.
Too often, we don't know how to answer back. We forget that there might be any other perspectives. We let ourselves be beaten and sink into despair. However, we should prepare one or two things to shoot back at the critic when they next come calling.
Every story has two sides
You could tell everything as a tragedy, or you could tell an equally valid and far kinder story. You could say that you made some serious errors, as every human will, and you paid the price for them. Nevertheless, you tried to be good and loved a few people properly. Despite everything, your heart is in the right place.
The difference between hope and despair depends on the way of telling conflicting stories from the same facts.
Your inner critic was always an outer critic
... who has been internalized. You're speaking to yourself as someone else once talked to you or made you feel.
You should acknowledge your failures and be happy to make amends. But you also have to stand back from this critic and question what they are doing in your mind. They don't have a right to walk as they wish through the rooms of your mind.
Life's a struggle for everyone.
Stop comparing what you know of your deep self to the shallow front others advertise about their lives.
Everyone seems to know how to live, but you don't. However, you don't know. We may decide what to tell and what to hide. A few people may appear to have perfect lives, but only because you don't know them well enough.
No one knows the future
Despair presumes you know the rest of the story. You don't. Keep going; the loveliest things could happen all of a sudden.
So, if you think that things are never going to get better, stop. The truth is: you don't know.
The fear of being alone
Concentrate on the people with very big hearts. Be honest with them about your pain - they'll find their way to you.
Thinking no one could ever love you sounds very tempting, but that can't be the truth. You've suffered, and you're honest and can be kind. That's enough for someone to stick with you.
Thinking you're ugly
Maybe you think you're ugly. That might be true, but so are lots of people.
When you love them, you start to see their soul, and you love their character in them. You probably haven't thought about what most people you love look like.
Cut your life up into smaller pieces
Who cares where you will be in five years? Make it to the next meal and a nice bath. If nothing terrible happens in the next hour, that is a triumph. Celebrate the peaceful next ten minutes.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
8
Key Ideas
The start of diplomacy
Diplomacy evolved initially to deal with problems in the relationships between countries.
Instead of leaders infuriating each other and making decisions in the heat of the moment, they ...
Diplomacy is an art
Diplomacy is the art of promoting an idea or cause without unnecessarily inflaming passions.
It involves an understanding of the many parts of human nature that can lead to strife and a commitment to handle these with foresight and grace.
Direct confrontation
Within a negotiation with someone, there is often a request that they change in some way.
A diplomat knows that it is futile to state the call to change too directly as many insist on having their way. Behind the arguing may lie a need for appreciation and esteem.
5 more ideas
3
Key Ideas
The Nature Of Work
Work, by definition, requires continuous effort, as completing anything of value, like attaining a college degree, building a business or writing a book, is a slow and steady process which spans mo...
When Doing Nothing Becomes Difficult
The mind seems terrified of the states of calm and relaxation as if work was a distraction to not let the mind come close to the worries and the existential queries. It saddles us with guilt and shame on the life we have lived, and the things that never materialized.
Doing nothing, it seems, becomes harder than doing any work that fills our time and keeps our mind engaged.
We Have To Keep Engaging Our Minds
Our work has a little known value: protecting us from a sense of despair and agony, and keeping us from doing the most difficult task: Doing Nothing.
The mind has to be kept engaged by providing it with mild challenges, one after the other, to keep it from falling into an abyss doom and terror.
3
Key Ideas
Mental Wellness
Being psychologically well does not mean being super excited, happy or exuberant at all times.
We are seldom aware of the stability of our ‘pendulum’ of thoughts and feeli...
The Window Of Tolerance
In psychological terms, our minds have a certain bandwidth within which we can tolerate discomfort, a certain speed range in which we can drive with ease, taking care of the challenges and problems. This is known as the window of tolerance.
If we cross the upward barrier in this speed range, we feel terrified, guilty or shameful. If we are below the bottom threshold of this window, we feel lonely, bored, alienated and numb. Remaining within the Window Of Tolerance is our daily challenge as we zig-zag between various emotions and try to keep ourselves sane by self-regulating the mind to remain in the ‘harmonious’ window, while not being stagnant.
Piloting Our Mind
If we continuously feel a lot of distress and draining, we should recover ourselves by moderation in eating and drinking, meditation, reading, exercising, and ample rest.
We need to be aware of the direction and trajectory of our moods, emotions and feelings, and make use of introspection and self-observation to get us out of possible pitfalls, avoiding a ‘crash landing’ at a later stage if we do not pay attention.