Take control of your Inner Critic

We all have a carping inner critic.

Often more than one. The nagging voices that say you’re not good enough. That you don’t know what you’re doing. And who do you think you are, anyway?

No matter how successful you are, how brilliant, they never really go away. But there are ways to take control of your inner critic. To quieten those carping, nagging voices that try to stop us playing big, and making the creative work we want to make.

Here are a few strategies to try.

1. Give your Inner Critic an identity

Name it. Draw it. Give it a personality, a backstory.

My inner critic is now called Gertrude. She is a rigid, pompous old lady who favours enormous, ridiculous floral hats. And she grips a huge handbag in front of her with both hands, so tightly it makes her knuckles white.

I don’t know what made her this way, but she’s terrified of pretty much everything. But especially the new and unfamiliar. 

All of this helps me to separate my critic, to realise that what she is saying is just an opinion – and often an overly harsh one. It’s not objective truth.

2. Befriend your Inner Critic

When I visualised Gertrude, I saw those tense hands gripping her handbag, and realised that much of her prattling is about fear. It enabled me to feel more compassion towards her.

Sometimes now I’ll hear her screaming, “Stop! Stop! You’re going to make a fool of yourself again!” And I just gently tell her it’s OK, I’ve got this. That I know she’s just trying to keep me safe, small, and invisible. But I’ll be fine, even if I do fail or make a fool of myself. That’s often enough to calm her for a while. 

3. Change its voice

Or indeed any of the modalities (the way you experience your critic, in your mind). The voices of Kenneth Williams or Bugs Bunny work well for me, taking the sting out of my critic’s cruellest barbs.

If you hear your critic loudly, try turning the volume down. Or speeding it up so the voice goes cartoonish. Play it through a crackling old transistor radio. Or see if you can turn the sound down completely.

If you can see your inner critic as well as hear it, change their clothes; turn them from colour to black-and-white (or vice versa).

Try putting them on a cinema screen and sit yourself in the audience, a witness to their absurd prattling. Then move yourself further back into the auditorium, so the screen becomes smaller, distant. Does any of this affect its power?

4. Write it down

Write out its favourite phrases, word for word. (Morning Pages is a great place for this.) Now examine them. See if you recognise them. For years, whenever I mislaid or forgot something, or clutter gathered in corners, a weary, despairing voice in my head declared, “Sheryl, you must get organised!” 

It was only when I wrote this down, and described it being said with pursed lips and a disapproving shake of the head, by a woman wearing a high-necked Laura Ashley frock that I realised. My secondary school English teacher had remained in my head for decades, still finding me unkempt, unruly, and lacking discipline. 

Once I saw this, she lost her influence over me. Weirdly, I also got more organised. Perhaps some small subconscious part of me was still rebelling against school, and what I then saw as pointless rules?

5. Cross-examine your Inner Critic

Once you’ve written your critic’s favourite phrases down, get forensic. Really question them. My go-to reason for not taking creative risks, for instance, is this: “Everyone will laugh at me.” 

One day, after writing this down, I stopped to examine this long-held belief for the first time. Everyone? Including my friends, my family, the Pope, the entire population of China, George Clooney, Beyoncé, Vladimir Putin, and indigenous peoples yet to be discovered, living deep in the Amazon rainforest? 

Obviously not everyone, then. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that even people I know will laugh—most of them are too busy with their own lives to even read what I’ve written, let alone waste time mocking it. 

Questions to ask:

• When did you decide this?
• Did you ever not believe it?
• Do you know anyone who doesn’t think it’s true?
• What’s the consequence of you believing this?
• What could you choose to believe instead?
• What would happen if you did believe that instead?

Whenever I try something new, I still think that everyone will laugh. I probably always will. But now I go ahead with whatever I wanted to do, anyway. And if people laugh, at least I’ve been entertaining!

6. Collect evidence of your own brilliance

Celebrate your wins: even the small ones. Keep compliments, praise, proof that you’re pretty good at what you do, or that you’re improving. Print out emails, write down positive things people say to you, keep letters, awards, good reviews. Put them together in a folder or book. (Well-hidden, if you feel self-conscious about it.) And on days when the inner critics are particularly vocal, or you’ve had a set-back or painful rejection in the real world, get it out and look through it. And remember just how awesome you are.

7. Let your Inner Critic motivate you

At the start of our creative journey, we do make a mess of things. We do make fools of ourselves, sometimes. We fail, a lot. And that’s OK. It’s how we learn and get better at our art and craft.

If your critical voices are strong, combat them by practicing more, researching more, learning from your inevitable mistakes. Do your verbs – writing, painting, making, playing, singing, sewing, designing, creating, cooking, building ­– until you reach a level of competence that’s indisputable.

It won’t silence your inner critics. They’ll always be there. But it’s a lot easier to quieten them down when you know what you’re doing. 

8. Tune in to your Inner Coach

We all have this, just as we all have inner critics. Our inner coach is our deep inner knowing, and it can be hard to hear under all the noise. I find meditation helps me tune into it, and walking mindfully, being hyper-aware of my surroundings instead of listening to all my internal chatter and getting lost in the stories I’m telling myself.  

How do you recognise it?

Your coach is kinder, quieter. Your critic is cruel, unkind, and talks to you in a way you’d never dream of talking to others. It tends to talk in absolutes: You always mess up; you’ll never get this right; everyone will laugh at you.

Your mentor is far more specific and helpful. Mine says things like this: “Get up early and have another go at that opening paragraph. You know it’s not right yet.”

Your mentor warns you that something is off, even if you can’t pin down exactly why. Learn to tune into it, to trust it. It’s on your side. 

9. Make it non-negotiable

Every morning at 8am, I sit at my desk and write for an hour. On days when I feel I can’t write, I stare into space. No scrolling or surfing; no email, no reading. My choice is stark: I can sit there and do nothing, or I can write. 

Even on a bad day, the writing eventually wins. And my inner critic doesn’t really get chance to sabotage this. It’s what I do, every day, without fail. Just like getting up, getting dressed, brushing my teeth. There’s no decision-making involved, so the critics can’t derail me. It’s who I am. 

10. Do some time travel

Relax, and take some deep, calming breaths. Close your eyes if possible, and gently float yourself way into the future, to your twilight years. Imagine that you’re sitting in your favourite chair, looking back over your life.

What are you proud of? Which achievements? What didn’t you do, that you would have liked to do?

Now consider. What will you regret most? Trying to create something extraordinary, and possibly failing – or never trying at all?

Letting your inner critics keep you safe but small – or feeling the fear and doing the things you want to do anyway?