The New Year and The Inner Critic part One

I’ve been seeing posts about the new year and setting intentions and goals and (shh, don’t say it!) res-o-lu-tions.  When I hear some of these, I hear pressure.  The opportunity for failure, and not the cool fail-forward type of failing but the deep-shame-inducing failure of coming up short.  Why would we set ourselves up for that?

There are many reasons why.  

One, many of us learned that our worth is based on our achievements and accomplishments.  Let me do X and then Y will be proud of me.

Y could equal parents, spouse, the world, teacher, society.  Is it wrong to want attention from people outside yourself?  No.  But we don’t want to be dependent on it because so much of the time that positive feedback is unavailable.  When your inner critical parent/inner critic/judge/gremlin comes to feed on your insecurity, how might you fight them off?

The first step is noticing.  So much of our anxiety is based on internalized expectations.  When can you pause and notice what you’re feeling?  I’ll give you an example.

Most weekends I have too much to do.  Because the “work week” is full of work, family, workouts, self-care and more work–I generally rely on the weekend for FUN.   So I really pack it in!  My wife and I usually do something chill on Friday night and something out on Saturday–a friends’ party, a show, a hike with our pup or some combination therein.  I also often connect with friends on Saturday morning in some fashion.  As an extrovert, the self-employed life can be a challenge even with all the Zooming I get to do.

Then Sunday is a mix.  I’ve established a no-work-on-Saturday rule, so if there are things to prep for the week ahead, they land on Sunday.  This past Sunday I squeezed in a visit to the farmers market and went to a post-holiday afternoon party.  And I’m writing this, though it doesn’t exactly feel like work or play.

The work is endless, and it can feel like I don’t have 5 minutes to meditate or deep breathe or even stretch…

But I do.  And so do you!

That inner critic can pose a threat though….  

(more next week!)