The Voice Inside Your Head

The Voice Inside Your Head

I drove home from a workshop once and didn't hear a single song on the radio.

Two hours. And my brain was too busy replaying every moment that hadn't landed the way I wanted. The bit that felt clunky. The question I fumbled. The energy in the room at that one point that I couldn't quite read. By the time I got home I'd practically talked myself into never delivering a workshop again.

Then I didn't sleep. Because apparently two hours of self-critique wasn't enough.

The feedback came back a few days later. It was great. Genuinely good feedback. People had valued it. Things had landed. And do you know what my inner critic did with that information?

Found a way to hold on anyway. Yes but you could have done that bit better. Yes but imagine how good it could have been.

That voice. We all have one. And for a lot of us, it's the loudest one in the room.

It doesn't show up when things go wrong. It shows up when we've done something that matters to us. When we've put ourselves out there. When we've tried. That's when it gets busy. Picking apart the edges. Replaying the moments. Measuring the gap between what happened and what we'd imagined.

And here's what I've come to understand about that voice. It's not trying to destroy you. It's trying to protect you. It's the part of you that cares deeply about doing good work. About showing up well. About mattering.

But left unchecked, it doesn't make you better. It just makes you smaller. Too scared to try again. Too focused on the gap to see what you actually did.

The work isn't silencing it. You won't. I haven't. The work is learning not to hand it the microphone.

Because that voice will always find something. Always. If you let it run the show it will talk you out of the workshop, the conversation, the decision, the room. And the world will lose something it actually needed.

The feedback was great. And I could probably do better next time. Both things are true. The difference is which one I choose to lead with.

The Conversation

Where is your inner critic running the show right now? And what would it look like to hear it, acknowledge it, and then put it back in its place?

Go with confidence this week
Mary-Anne :)