Stop Trying to Make Friends with Your Inner Critic

I came to quite a realisation recently, one that was so obvious that I’m ashamed that it took me so many years to arrive at this epiphany. It was a small realisation in the scheme of things, a slight shift of perspective, but for me it has made a world of difference. I have to remind myself often of this shift as old habits die hard, but when I do, when I remember, I feel a freedom of thought, a rising in confidence and a release from negativity that I have seldom felt before.

And that’s why I wanted to share this with you.

So here’s the thing. Like many women, I often have moments (sometimes very long moments) of self-doubt, of low self-esteem, of a lack of confidence in daily life. At these moments, like many women, and perhaps many men too, I tend to focus on one aspect of myself, perhaps the frizziness of my hair, the bags under my eyes or my ineptitude in social situations. And once I have fixated on this aspect, it feels that the only way to regain my confidence is to fix it. So I look online, I try different products, new moisturisers, I seek out new breathing techniques or meditations.

And then one day, really rather recently, I recognised the voice of the inner critic and realised, with a huge sigh of relief, that I didn’t have to fix anything. I didn’t need to research and invest in anything at…