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But…what if my inner critic is part of what motivates me?

By March 31, 2012 16 Comments

So, you’ve been getting to know your inner critic. You realize that the anxious, mean, voice in your head is actually in charge of many of the choices you make each day.

You see how its chatter about what you deserve prevents you from honoring your real dreams for your life. How it keeps you from sharing the bold, unique ideas that will get you moving in your career. How its pontifications about your belly and arms and thighs make a day at the beach a lot less fun.

You start to contemplate no longer listening to this voice. But then a little, troubling realization pops up:

“What if the inner critic is what has been motivating me to succeed all this years?”

You realize: it’s often the anxiety screaming, “DON’T SCREW THIS UP” in your head that makes you reread and reread and reread and improve the document. It’s the voice that sighs in disappointment when you look in the mirror that ensures that you stay physically active. You wonder, could the inner critic be the motivator behind a lot of the “good” and “productive” stuff I do?

This question has been coming up in my talks and workshops, a lot. Here’s my answer.

Part I: Yes, the inner can be your motivator.
Part 2: There are serious costs of being motivated this way. Serious.
Part 3: If you knew of an alternative, would you still choose to be motivated by the critic?

The critic can spur us into action. A sense of inadequacy can drive us to work harder, to prepare more, to do more. But what are the costs of that?

Our lives don’t feel sensual, fun, luscious, when the critic is running the show. We don’t experience our connection to others when the critic is threading its voice through our interactions with others. We walk through our lives with a really horrible soundtrack in our heads, on repeat. “You aren’t enough. You are about to fail. Who do you think you are?” (You know that catchy one? Lots of verses but the chorus remains the same…?)

Second, yes the critic leads us to do stuff, but does it really lead us into wise action? When I have a speaking engagement coming up, sometimes my inner critic jumps in: “You didn’t prepare enough for this – now it’s too late and you are already screwed. This is going go very poorly. This topic is all wrong.” The critic can scare me into more preparing and last-minute rewriting, but I’ve noticed, over time – the extra work I do from this self-critical, panicky place usually turns out to be not very high quality work, or work that was needed at all.

If you are aware that the critic is motivating you, take a good hard look: are the actions it drives you to really in the service of your dreams, or your professional blossoming? The inner critic can help us have some small wins but does that matter if it has also caused us to be playing the wrong game entirely?

And then, health. I think about this a lot lately, because I’m now squarely in my adult working life, and the question occurs to me: well, if I were to keep doing it this way for the next two or three decades of my working life, what would the impact of that be?

I know that when I am being driven by the critic, there is a lot of adrenalin moving through my system, a lot of stress hormones and racing heart beats. Human bodies are not meant to be in that state for hours everyday – and it takes a serious toll on our health if we are.

But you don’t need me to tell you that. You can feel it: when you are being driven by this anxious never satisfied, voice, you can feel how it depletes and strains your physical systems. You feel the exhaustion, the headaches, the jitters. And you experience the collateral health damage – the extra reaches for caffeine or sugar to keep up the pace, or the over-eating or over-drinking to calm yourself from the stress.

So here’s my question to you today: For those of you who feel you’ve been motivated by the critic, I invite you to start to wonder into the question: how else might I motivate myself? What else could provide the push or the pull into action? And for those of you have found another way, tell us about it. If not from fear, and self-doubt, from what do you act? What motivates you? How do you name it? Love? Dreams? Values? Service? How does acting from this place feel, and what are the results? Please share.

Love,

Tara

Join the discussion 16 Comments

  • Tim Larison says:

    I am giving a speech in a couple of weeks to a breakfast group of about 50 people. Instead of letting my inner critic fan the flames of that old public speaking fear of mine, I’m excited by the message I will be sharing. It’s a topic I care about and want to tell others about it. That’s a different, and much more positive, motivation than worrying about my speech delivery.

  • Julie O'Day says:

    Great timing for this! I am in the middle of writing my first article to be published in a local health magazine, due tomorrow. The usual fear has already popped up–“people who know me will read it, what will they think of me?” or “what if it isn’t perfect or they disagree; they won’t like me anymore!”
    It would be so easy to spend my entire day hunched over the computer, sweating over every single one of the 250 words I’m allowed. So I think to myself, how do I stay connected to my natural joy in writing?
    By letting go of my need to be liked. By letting go of my need to be perfect. By allowing myself to find joy in the simple pleasure of wordplay. By giving myself permission to express myself in just exactly the way that feels true to me. And by reminding myself, whenever I start to feel anxious, that my value is not to be found in other people’s opinions or in what I produce. That it is enough for ME to love ME, simply because I AM!

  • Kety says:

    My children are my motivators!

  • Mari Beth says:

    First step is to ACCEPT THOSE FEELINGS. When I’m having a stress response,as indicated by racing heart, butterflies, etc., it’s usually because I’m fighting the feelings I’m having, whether it’s anxiety, defensiveness, jealousy, etc. My inner critic tells me I shouldn’t be feeling this way.
    I’ve recently begun to tell myself, “IT’S OKAY that I am having these feelings.” I’ve noticed it calms me down immediately and I become much less defensive and a little more lighthearted. Sometimes, I even find more courage to speak my truth.
    I’ve noticed that when I have trouble sleeping due to anxiety, and I say to myself, “it’s o.k. that I’m feeling anxiety”…the anxiety almost immediately goes away. The acceptance of the feeling seems to work like magic to create peacefulness.
    A good mantra for us all to say every day to ourselves and post on our mirrors; “I accept myself unconditionally right now.”

  • Gwendolyn says:

    This is really funny to think about. A critical thought tells us to do something out of fear because we are “less than”, then another comes in and tells us to listen to the previous thought because we are desperate for motivation to get the result our ego wants. Sounds like my inner conversation around Botox. One voice says you are getting ugly furrows in your brow. Another comes in and says “you know looking young really is a source of power. You could really learn something from judging your self” and avoid being judged by the world for getting old.” It then goes on to say even JANE FONDA just got a face lift. My wisdom self knows this is pure nonsense. What I know for sure, underneath my monkey mind is no ones judgment means anything about me….but is purely about themselves unless I agree with it. So far, no plastic surgery and loving being 56, furrows in my wiser moments.

  • Stacey says:

    I find when any activity is linked with a higher purpose, the critic is quiet.

  • Peggy says:

    Hi Tara,

    Beautiful blog today. I would like to share my daughter’s blog with you. Her motivation: to recover from a horrible illness.
    Please check out her website and blog on: http://www.thekissyproject.weebly.com

    A very proud Mum xo

  • Fay says:

    Tara,
    Thanks you for this posting.
    This rings so true for me right now. I submit my PhD at the end of April and I have a considerable amount of work to do. I am cross with myself for the situation – I imagined a much more graceful and positive process. Instead, my inner critic is ‘running rampant’ and I am constantly in a state of an internal dialogue between my inner critic (loud voice, strong, wilful) and my ‘self’. (tiny voice, diminished and exhausted) which leaves me more often than not in a state of frozen fear.
    I will take your lead today. What immediately struck me when reading your post was ‘who am I writing this for?’. Today, I will attempt not to write to please the inner critic, but for pleasure and excitement for the subject.
    Let’s see how it goes !

  • Kirsten says:

    I am moved to be joining in among this wise group of women here, Tara and commenters. Being motivated by the joy of the work, and the wish to live a pleasant, playful life–and that I am worthy of this–is a critical noticing and intention as I set out to found a new business this week.

    This comes at a wonderful moment.

  • I am in a very creative phase, wanting to develop workshops, write articles for my blog, collaborate with like minded individuals, create more financial abundance. Sometimes it gets a little overwhelming, and sometimes the inner critic emerges. That’s when I tune in to my heart and let my heart lead the way. It never lets me down because when I am in my heart I am aligned with Spirit and my own true essence.

  • Samantha says:

    My inner critic was calling myself a “flake” for pursuing yet another career opportunity in less than 2 years; my newly renamed motivator, “ambition”, is allowing me to do this, self-judgement free.

  • What motivates YOU? « San Diego Drum School says:

    […] out this fantastic article on taramohr.com. It discusses the “inner critic” and the consequences of using it as […]

  • Vicki says:

    Tara, thanks so much for this. When we do something from a place of deepened peace and purpose, that’s when our strength is the most potent, manifested.

    I mentioned your post in one of my recent blog entries:

    http://www.vickimach.com/1/post/2012/04/every-day-with-renewed-gusto-getting-assaulted-and-nearly-losing-my-eyesight-plus-an-exercise.html.

  • Pamelah says:

    i just learned today that possibly my insecurity and feelings of vulnerability are an ok place to be in creating the new life i am leading. perhaps by sitting in the discomfort of those feelings and knowing that i am completly protected and loved by my higher power is way more sane than going into the old ways of trying to get love and acceptance from people that can’t give it to me.

  • nice post – I concur with this approach , always a feeling I would rather not feel lurks under anxiety, personally I feel most uncomfortable with saddness. Recognition and acceptance and prayer for help from where-ever can remind us we are held in an enigmatic space where what seems good sometimes turns out to feel bad and what seems bad often brings good. We run into helpers” everywhere if we allow it, can can turn it over to the mystery without having to figure it all out.

  • nice post — I concur with this approach , always a feeling I would rather not feel lurks under anxiety, personally I feel most uncomfortable with saddness. Sometimes it’s not anxiety per se but a superwoman persona, gets me flying way to fast. Recognition and acceptance of whatever I’m feeling and doing together with a prayer for help from where-ever can remind me of humility and the power of peacefullness. We are held in an enigmatic space where what seems ‘good’ sometimes turns out to give way to ‘bad’ and what seems ‘bad’ often brings ‘good’. We run into helpers” everywhere if we allow it, we can turn feelings and stress responses over to the mystery without having to figure it all out. Asking for help of any kind reminds us, on a spiritual level, we are never alone and that in turn relieves stress and anxiety.!

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