Send Your Inner-Critic on Vacation-- Permanently!

The Christian Gospel of Luke contains the story of the Prodigal Son. The story revolves around a man and his two sons. The younger son is lacking in conscience and thinks only of himself. One day he asks his father for his inheritance, the father obliges and the son runs off and squanders all of the money. Once he’s broke, he contrives a scheme to return to his father and beg him to allow him to become a hired hand. Instead, the father fully forgives the unrepentant son because the father’s love is so great that it looks beyond the young man’s behavior. The father dresses his son in the finest robes, puts rings on his fingers and arranges for a grand party to welcome the son home. The older son, once he learns of what has happened, is furious with his father and his brother.

Because the older son is highly critical of his brother I want you to imagine the older brother as the inner-critic of the younger brother. Seems so many of us struggle with an inner-critic, and in many ways, our inner-critic is like a separate person who dwells within us. The inner-critic (older brother) of the younger brother tells him “You don’t deserve to be forgiven! You don’t deserve those fine robes! You don’t deserve those rings. You don’t deserve a lavish party! You don’t deserve to be loved—at all! You are a horrible rotten excuse for a person!”

How often have we been beaten up in the same way by our own inner-critic? I say the inner-critic is like a separate person living inside of us because it is different from your conscience. Your conscience exists to tell you certain behaviors you’ve engaged in were wrong and hurtful. You then feel a certain amount of guilt until you take responsibility for your bad behavior and rectify it. Any further self-criticism or excessive guilt is not from your conscience. It comes from the inner-critic: The big brother or big sister who is always unmercifully telling you how undeserving you are.

If you are suffering from the ever-critical voice of your inner-critic, now is the time to take your power back from it. First, stop believing what it has to say. Allow it to share with you if it must, but then thank it and dismiss whatever it has to say as unacceptable to you. No one is required to believe anything their inner-critic has to say. The less you pay attention to it, the less power it will have. Only you have the ability to give it power by believing what it has to say. Just gently dismiss it and go about you day believing you are everything it says you’re not.

Eventually, you will quiet your inner-critic to the point that it will be bored with you, and it will take period vacations, leaving you to be in peace. Hopefully, as you wrestle away all of its power by ignoring it, your inner-critic will go on permanent vacation and you will be more at peace and at ease with yourself—and everyone around you!