What is the most effective way to take the wind out of the sails of an (unfair) critic? To contradict him? To defend yourself? Arguing with him about why he is wrong? No. On the contrary, the most effective way to silence him is to agree with him.
The harshest and most constant critic does not stand in front of us; instead, he sits enthroned between our ears and nothing escapes him. Sometimes you can ignore him, turn a deaf ear to him, tell yourself not to listen to him, but you can’t completely ward off the criticism. It gnaws at you, and whether you like it or not, it also affects you. Maybe you don’t say or do something because you fear this inner criticism. Or you condemn yourself for something you said or did in the past because the critic keeps reminding you and telling you that you should have said or done this or that instead. All this costs energy and drains you in the long run.
The first time
There’s this preconception that women can’t park. Every time I wanted to park, I had it in my head, and also that if a man parks badly, he’s just a man who parks badly. But a woman represents the entire female half of the world’s population and if she parks badly, all women park badly. I didn’t want to add fuel to this prejudice and tried to park as well as possible. And was often dissatisfied. Not parked fast enough, not elegant enough, etc pp. Then it occurred to me: If they say women park badly, why fight it? Can’t I make that work for me? I can park as badly as I want, after all I’m a woman, I’m allowed to. And I also make some people very happy, namely those who think women can’t do it anyway. So I have no stress, and they see their prejudice confirmed. Win-win.
In the meantime, I’m actually much more relaxed about parking. If there are only a few spaces available, I make sure that I don’t obstruct others. But if it’s a big parking lot with lots of open spaces, I don’t waste time on the perfect clearances to the right and left. And I even take out extra space: most parking lots are great if you’re driving alone, but don’t take into account that you might have kids with you, getting in and out and wanting to be strapped in as well. It’s happened that I’ve had so little room that I’ve had to bend over backwards, kneeling in the driver’s seat, to buckle the kids in. To prevent this, I now often park so that at least one side is easy to reach and I can reach both kids without bending. If the parking spaces are not oriented to mothers, mothers will just have to conquer their spaces themselves.
Once the reputation is ruined…
…you can live quite freely. And I don’t mean the reputation you have with others, but the reputation or image you like to have of yourself. After enjoying the new serenity of parking, at some point I realized that this serenity can be achieved in other areas as well, and that is by simply accepting that you are incapable. I started saying “I suck” and had to smile right away. On the one hand, because of course I know it’s not true and it sounded very exaggerated, but also because I thought it freed me. The English “suck” also didn’t have such a very negative meaning for me, maybe also because English is not my native language, and the “suck” was more a sound than really a condemnation. Every time I failed at something, I said to myself “Wasn’t it obvious, I suck when it comes to tidying/gardening/being friendly, for example. What did you expect!”. I shrugged my shoulders and moved on.
Nod and smile
I realized that it takes almost no energy at all and quickly silences the inner critic if you shrug your shoulders and agree with him. I replaced the word suck with a more neutral word: unable. Here are a few examples:
“You wanted to keep your laptop nice and neat, and now look at it again: It´s a complete mess! You just can’t manage to keep it tidy! You’re not a child anymore, you should have learned that by now” – “You’re right. I am unable to keep order in the long run. Apparently, I still lack the right routine.”
“Your kids are sitting in front of the TV again and eating unhealthy stuff. A perfect mother would know how to entertain her kids while doing other important things, instead of them being parked in front of the TV. You need to try harder.”-“You’re right. A perfect mother would know that. I guess I’m unable to live up to that ideal.”
“How long has it been since you were really athletic? You need to finally get off your butt and incorporate exercise into your daily routine. Don’t be so lazy.” – “You’re right. I’m unable to sort through all the tasks I have every day so that I also have time and energy to exercise.”
“Instead, you’re eating that unhealthy stuff again. It doesn’t even taste great. You always talk about changing your habits, but then you don’t do it. You’re so inconsistent.”-“You’re right, I seem to be unable to change my habits right now. I guess my priorities are elsewhere right now.”
“Back when you were constantly arguing with people about veganism, you shouldn’t have gotten so upset and stayed calm and matter-of-fact. You let them totally wear you down and make a fool of yourself.”-“You’re right, getting upset because someone has a different opinion doesn’t help. I was unable to stay calm in the situation because the issue affects me deeply. Now I know more about why people stick to their opinion despite good arguments and also realize that many of their arguments were only meant to distract me. I didn’t have this knowledge back then. Today, I can handle such discussions differently, but I had to learn that first.”
Inability is value-free and not final
I chose the word unable quite deliberately because it has a completely neutral, non-judgmental meaning for me. I didn’t use words like flop or fail, which have a judgmental meaning. Instead, I see myself as an observer who looks at a situation from the outside and grasps what is, without judgment.
Moreover, there is nothing final about inability, such as flopping or failing, which tend to announce an end, a failure to reach a goal. Inability, however, can be a momentary state, and possibly develop into ability, which even adds a certain optimism to it.
Embracing one’s own inability
We always strive to achieve a certain ideal, and the inner critic judges whether our actions achieve an ideal or not. Ideals are either brought to us from the outside, or we set them ourselves. However, these ideals are sometimes completely unrealistic and no matter how hard we try, it is impossible to achieve them. And if we do reach them, we can’t maintain the level for long. And then the inner critic screams that we are failing. Most of the time we are below the level of “perfect” and if we believe that we can be satisfied only when we have reached this ideal, then not very much of life is filled with this pleasant feeling. (Which is a great pity, considering that we probably only have this one life).
If we always see what we can’t do (be perfect), we miss out on acknowledging what we can do.
However, we can instead add a baseline of inability. In many things and often we are often or every now and then simply unable. But there are also things that we do relatively well, and often enough we are able, that is, capable of doing something well above the baseline. Anything above the baseline is something. A bonus to be happy about. So instead of judging one’s actions on the basis of the perfectionism line, which cannot be reached or maintained anyway, and scolding oneself for never reaching it, one can be happy that one is above the baseline quite often. Embracing one’s own inability means increasing the area, and thus the time of one’s life, in which one can simply be satisfied with oneself (and others) instead of constantly beating oneself up.
The baseline of inability illustrates that we can do quite a lot quite well. If we accept inability as a baseline, we can use the energy we would otherwise waste on the critical voice to create purposeful pathways that help us evolve.
Using inability to one´s advantage:
One of my ideals was to do everything on my own. But I realized that I can achieve much more and develop much better if I ask others for help. For example, I am unable to write a perfect article. I can manage a relatively good article, that’s something. But if I dare to send this article to a person who gives me good feedback, the article can improve many times over and I can also develop myself further because I can use what I have learned for the next articles. Even my last cover letter was okay at first, but became really good after I asked friends to take a look and give me constructive criticism. My ideal of getting really good articles done all by myself kept me from getting the feedback I needed to move forward. It got in the way of my goal to write good articles. Acknowledging that I was unable to do it on my own opened up the possibility of asking for help and making progress.
I’ve also realized that I can’t juggle the tasks of keeping the house clean and tidy, taking care of the kids and keeping them entertained, focusing on finding a job, pursuing my own interests, and many, many other tasks. So instead of continuing to try to “just find the right daily schedule that makes it all happen,” I’m going to ask my mom to give me a hand.
I was in a bad mood the other day and went outside with the kids. I was approached by a person with whom I had to clarify something but didn’t feel like talking because of my bad mood. The person said hello in a friendly way, so did I, and then I said we had to move on. They seemed surprised and actually about to stop to have a chat, but I kept walking. Was I supposed to feel stupid about that? Because I’m actually a friendly person. Nonsense. I was unable to be particularly accommodating in the situation, and I was unable to pretend that everything was fine. Maybe next time I’ll be able to do that, when I’m in a better mood and more communicative.
Other people have different ideals that they may fail to meet again and again. Saying to yourself “Apparently I am unable to live up to this ideal. All right, then I’ll just work with what I think I can manage” can take immense pressure off and make room for accepting yourself and finding new ways to get closer to your goals.
The inability of others
If you yourself are unable to act perfectly, then of course others are too. Many incidents in the past and supposed mistakes of other people can be looked at with a much milder view:
A person reacts angrily to the smallest criticism and directly pulls up a wall? – She is unable to deal with her feelings and has not yet found an effective way to respond to criticism.
Someone does not react the way you would like them to? – He is currently unable to respond to requests. It may not be clear why, but something is stopping him, he just can’t do it now.
An acquaintance makes a hurtful comment? – He’s unable to see what he’s doing with it. And if he does, he is unable to behave appropriately socially.
If people could act better, they would. No one behaves stupidly on purpose. When they misbehave, they are apparently incapable of appropriate behavior at the moment. The same is true for ourselves. Instead of judging the other person or ourselves, we can be lenient and simply hope that the other person, and ourselves, will learn from our experience and grow beyond our inabilities in the future.
Serenity
I had believed that I would not be so easily swayed and that I would not be pressured by the expectations of others, but my own expectations had a firm grip on me and literally knocked me down again and again. I felt overwhelmed and sometimes even apathetic because I didn’t know where to start in order to fulfill the huge mountain of my own expectations in order to conform to the image I would like to have of myself. I also judged others very critically at times. Instead of looking at what they were doing, I was looking at what they were not doing. Changing this view has great consequences:
When my children do not follow my instruction, I tell myself that they are unable to understand it or they are unable to comply because of other needs. Or that I am unable to express myself clearly. Either way, I get upset less often (I’d be lying if I said I always stay relaxed, but it’s definitely gotten more relaxed). Now when I think about messing up in the future, maybe at an interview, I shrug my shoulders. Then I’ll probably be unable to perform better in that moment. And anything I’ve done or said in the past, I’ve said or done as well as I could at that moment. If I didn’t do something well, then for whatever reason, I was unable to do it better. Maybe I will do better in the future, maybe I won’t. If my fellow human beings do not behave perfectly, the same is true for them: At that moment, they were unable to do better. One could now argue that murderers then probably could not have acted differently. Perhaps that is also the case. But that does not absolve them of their guilt. What I am concerned with in this article, however, is everyday actions, and how we can deal with ourselves and others, and how we can ensure that our energy is not eaten away by inner critics, and we direct our limited life time to pleasant or helpful feelings and thoughts that move us forward instead of blocking us. Since embracing inability, and harnessing it by using it, rather than perfection, as an anchor to judge my actions, I have definitely found a whole new serenity.
This thought will probably not appeal to everyone. Some will also think “I don’t have problems like that.” But I’m not a snowflake, I’m not unique in terms of the critical voice in my head, and if this thought helps me, then maybe it will help someone else. That’s why I wrote this article. Maybe it´s not perfect, but if it helps, it has served its purpose.
Yours,
RE