A method for an internal critic

Have you ever experienced a situation when you wanted to achieve a goal but something prevented you from doing this? You heard voices in your mind that effectively discouraged you from fulfilling your aim because they were telling you that you would’t succeed. Such a voice is called an internal critic and from now on we will fight with it.

It doesn’t matter who this voice belongs to. It could be of your “protective” parents, teachers, superiors or even of your own and you have to get rid of this voice to remove the existing limitations.

If you have such an internal critic who tells you for example “it won’t work”, “you won’t succeed”, or “it’s not worth the trouble”... think about him now and call him, let him come and do what he is good at.

He doesn’t expect any trick...

When you hear your internal critic, start to separate particular auditory submodalities of his voice, one by one. To do that think about:

  • The place the sound comes from (usually it will come from the inside of your head)
  • Is it your own voice or someone’s else (whose)
  • Pay attention to its timbre, height, tone, tempo of speaking, spare as much time on these considerations as you need...

Kicking the critics out

Begin to gradually change the particular submodalities of this internal voice.

  • at the beginning, if he is inside your head, take him out and transfer behind you to the back, to the front, to the side, down (under the chair, only if you are sitting)
  • start also changing his tone, timbre, tempo, let it become at first an exceptionally silent whisper and then a thunderous loud bass roar; let him speak slowly or very fast (like a slowed down or accelerated recorder tape); His voice may be also coquettish, malice or cheerful
  • and what would happen if you critic had a voice of Donald Duck? Or that of your other favourite cartoon hero?
  • it’s worth a try to give him a rhythm, i.e. let him speak or sing in the time of Macarena melody or other “hit of the season”,
  • you may grant your critic with a voice of a person whom you completely do not trust and believe, choose someone (it’s easy, it can be a politician) and let your critic speak his voice; it will be soon brought home that you no longer trust him

Make experiments with your internal critics; use many ways to limit his influence on you. All that he says should sound ridicules and unrealistic.

Do this exercise as many times as you need to neutralize completely the ascendancy of internal voices over your frame of mind. These voices lost their self-confidence, became funny, childish and not serious.

From now on it is you who control the situation. Nobody will spoil your joy ;)