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by Now What?® Coaching Founder, Laura Berman Fortgang

“I can’t do that!”
“Who do I think I am?”
“People like me don’t do things like that!!”
“I have no business even dreaming of that!”

These are the mantras of the critic inside of you. The voice of ‘reason’ that talks ‘sense’ into you when you try to think outside the box, or in this case, outside your resume.

I won’t say unequivocally that you should not listen to them and just forge forward. I will say instead that they are there to teach you something about yourself. They are the walls you have built that you can take down. To keep them down, however, you’ll have to take notice of what they are made of.

Every belief you have that keeps you in the box was put there by an experience that shaped you. Without doing psychoanalysis or deep therapy, you can quickly take stock of where they came from to insure that they won’t bother you enough to stop you.

THE DISSECTION OF THE INNER CRITIC

1) Notice what you are saying to yourself
Iyanla Vanzant, a NY Times bestselling self-help author and friend likes to say, “You should not be in your own head without adult supervision!” I concur. You can’t let your inner critic run amuck. Notice what looping audio keeps going on in there. When you catch your critic yapping, make it stop. If you must, just yell ‘stop!’

Identify what you are specifically repeating to yourself and move to the next step.

2) Identify the Source
Who says? Who says you can’t change careers at this age? Who says you have to do the same thing your whole life? Who says?!!

You only believe what you believe because you’ve collected evidence that it’s true. Whether you observed it yourself or someone filled your head with it, identify what makes you think what you think. Even it’s the ‘norm’ it doesn’t mean the idea has merit for you.

3) Hurt of Serve?
Does it help your cause to indulge in this line of thinking? I doubt it, so what makes you persist with it? Where can you find an opening to see that you may be more than you are allowing with this assumption? What evidence can you find to the contrary no matter how small or circumstantial?

4) Choose Again
This is the ‘just do it’ part. You’re stuck. You’re miserable. You see no way out. This is the way out.

Change the critic to the defender and prove it wrong. Change the situation by framing it with what’s possible instead of giving it a gilded frame made up of your fears and doubts.

5) Measure by Feeling Not By Thinking
How does it feel to get to the other side of your inner critic? Pretty good, huh? Well use that for your new criteria as to whether a career choice is right or wrong for you.

Remember what it feels like to be in a volley with your inner critic, compare it to the feeling you just felt as the defender of your idea and choose. How would you rather feel?

“Am I just kidding myself, though?”, you might ask.

No. That’s just your inner critic trying to cut in again.

I know you probably think you’re nuts and deluding yourself and maybe others are saying that about you. In my opinion, that is a good sign. It means you’re on to something that’s right for you and threatening to the status quo.

Let me ask you this: Does it feel good to let that doubt back in? No? Then forge on. Scary is not comfortable either but combined with the excitement of the possibilities of doing something that really appeals to you, it should be enough to start taking action.

Time and time again when a coaching client starts in the direction of a scary new venture, I see them bump into opportunities and people that can help them get where they want to go.

That is the reward that awaits when you overcome the inner critic. The career transition Inner Critic is especially tricky but beatable. Please get started. The world needs what you are angst-ing over sooner rather than later.