Lean Into Your Inner Critic

In middle school, I signed up for the school basketball team. My coach observed that I was great at running up and down the court but not as skilled at getting the ball into the hoop. He encouraged me to try cross country.

That began a lifelong love of running, and a couple of weeks ago I finished my twelfth marathon. The race got off to a bumpy start. First, I forgot to check sunrise and didn’t realize it would start in the dark.

Thankfully someone with a headlamp shared their light. Despite the sun rising, the temperature continued dropping. My toes and fingers grew stiff.

Appendages aside, I felt great. Better than expected.

At mile 23, I was on-track to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

At mile 24, I still thought I could.

At mile 25, I was sooo close.

But not close enough. In a race lasting hours, I missed my goal by seconds.

My internal critic had lots to say about this.

“Ha, I knew you couldn’t do it. You’ll never make it to Boston.”

Fortunately, I have a good relationship with my inner critic, and we had a nice chat.

Me: Did you really know I couldn’t make it?

Inner Critic: Well, no. But I guessed right. Ha!

Me: It’s still pretty cool I ran a marathon though.

Inner Critic: Maybe but you’ll never be Boston fast.

Me: I was close. With better training, qualifying seems possible.

Inner Critic: Fine. Ugh. Whatever.

I haven’t always been so good at challenging my inner critic. Several years ago, I had an unproductive working relationship that gave my inner critic lots to talk about. I would send my literary agent a project. She would set a deadline to return the work to me. That date would fly by. I would nudge. She would set a new deadline and on and on.

One morning instead of emailing a nudge, I texted her. The agent responded with an email cc-ing the president of her literary agency calling me “demanding.”

Knowing I wasn’t ready to respond to that yet, I went for a drive. While out and about, I took a corner too sharply and grazed a stop sign, leaving one long scrape down the family van.

Oh, my internal critic had a field day.

“You’ve dinged the family car and your ‘career’ doesn’t make any money! You’ll never make it as a children’s writer!”

Have you had a conversation with yourself like that? How do you get yourself out of a negative feedback loop?

For me, I learned to pull myself out by leaning into my inner critic.

Instead of avoiding it, I listened with greater care and parsed truth from exaggeration. Here’s how I lean into my inner critic.

1. I ask it to be specific.

My inner critic likes to speak in broad generalization and superlatives: always, never, all the time. These are rarely true, so when my inner critic says, “This writing is trash,” ask it for the thing that needs the most improvement. Voice? Pacing? What?

2. I ask it to focus.

I try to give myself feedback like I would a good friend: Start with something positive. Pick one to three items to work on, and end with something else positive. Any more than that and I think, ‘Hey, this isn’t helping. Let’s bring it back to what I can do right now.’

3. I give myself breaks.

If a project isn’t clicking after that, I set it aside for a while. I’m not abandoning it; I’m letting it fallow.

4. Get outside perspectives from trusted sources.

Sometime it takes someone else to help you see how far you’ve come. Just make sure the person is a reliable and positive influence in your life. You don’t need toxic thoughts stoking your inner critic’s ego.

Facing my weaknesses in small, manageable chunks helped me improve as a writer, a friend, and moved me in the direction of making better career choices.

This month I’ve leaned into my inner critic by signing up for another marathon. Honestly, I might fail at my Boston goal again. However, even if I never make it, I’ll keep going. At my doctor check up last week, the nurse had to take my resting heart rate twice. She couldn’t believe it was so low. That’s a win all by itself!

This is all to say, where you are right now might seem like somewhere extraordinary to a different version of you. And someone who seems like the are in an extraordinary position might feel like they are falling to pieces. Give yourself and other people a little room for grace and growth.

You never know how far you’ll go until you try!