The feeling of overwhelm and anxiety can take away from your work, your health, and ultimately your growth.

And in these experiences, your inner critic goes hard to work. It tells you all the reasons why you’re struggling, why it’s your fault, and a litany of other disempowering things.

Over the past few years, more and more people have reached out to me for help in overcoming this. I’ve had this experience too. So let me share with you what I have done in my own life. And what tools I’ve given to my students and clients to not only defeat the inner critic, but to change it into something else.

The inner critic isn’t just your imagination

You have an inner critic that lives in your head. You might call this your ego. It never says anything positive or encouraging to you. It’s constantly telling you that:

• you’re not good enough
• other people don’t care about you
• what you’re doing won’t work
• you’ll always fail
• regardless of how hard you tried it doesn’t matter
• and on and on……

That’s what a constant critic does.

Your inner critic can’t find anything good to say so it just speaks from a place of loss and brokenness. Bullies do the same thing.

When you hear these thoughts in your head, what do you do?

Honestly, I used to listen to these thoughts and accept them as truth. I would think that it was God telling me how life really is. But God is Love, and Love speaks with encouragement and peace.

There’s nothing peaceful about being talked down to and belittled. Who does that with a desire to get the best out of you?

Only a bully or someone who doesn’t respect you.

What to do to take your power back

You can let your inner critic, the bully who lives inside your head to have the final say.

OR

You can take your power back!

The #1 way to keep your inner critic from suffocating your joy today is to recognize exactly what it is: the doubts and fears inside you that are speaking up.

Here’s the real deal Holyfield: You are more than your doubts and fears.

You are more than what your inner critic says.

Choose to believe in yourself and the game will change. I promise you! It did for me when I turned the inner dialogue repeated in my head around and I chose to believe something different.

One of the ways I got into a practice of overcoming the negative beliefs and doubts that had been so prevalent in my way of thinking was to repeat a mantra to myself over and over again:

“I Believe In Me!!!”

This four-word phrase will change the game for you forever.

The inner critic works to erode your confidence, to take away your belief in yourself and your capabilities. It wants to make you live in a perpetual state of fear, doubt, worry and anxiety.

You change your mindset by changing what you words and thoughts you allow inside your head.

Empowering and affirming words are a powerful way to break out of negative patterns.

Align yourself with confidence and believe that you can do anything. If you believe it, it can come true. If you don’t, it won’t.

This is where to start to transform your inner critic

As you silence the voice of your inner critic, you’ll need to replace those limiting and doubtful beliefs that have been repeated to you over and over again with empowering and affirming beliefs.

This is part of stepping into your true superpower. Where you change the stories you’ve been telling yourself and live out the awesomeness that you are.

It’s one step at a time. And it’s all about your using your inherent creative abilities to rewrite your own narrative.

Confidence comes from the beliefs you have about who you are. And those beliefs are the product of your inner storytelling.

When you change your story, you can invite that inner critic to change its story too. Can you imagine having an inner encourager inside your head, reminding you of your greatness?

It’s possible. Just believe it is. And send Love to that inner critic voice, reminding it that you are Love.

And reminding it of the truth. You believe in you. And that’s the only gospel you’re listening to.

*This article was originally published at dgrantsmith.com.

D Grant Smith is known as the Growth Farmer, which means he has an old-fashioned approach to living a whole & healthy life. Get his free ebook called Love Is The Seed To Success, that gives help in healing relationships and growing healthy ones. His new book Be Solid: How To Go Through Hell & Come Out Whole is about the journey into self-love and self-care after heartbreak and personal loss. He’s an empowerment superhero who would love to give you encouragement so feel free to reach out!

Image courtesy of Morgan Basham.