You’ve crafted the perfect email to your boss. You’ve outlined a new approach and explained how it’s better than what the team currently does. You’ve cited analytics and real-life examples. Your reasoning is airtight.
But a voice in your head stops you, ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about. This isn’t going to work. Why should they trust you?’ And that voice comes back every time you open the email to send it.
The inner critic often speaks to us in ways we would never put up if it was coming from someone else and can stop us in our tracks, but it’s in our heads – what can we do?
In this article, I will show you how you can manage your inner critic and empower your inner champion to take centre stage.
Naming Your Inner Critic
Reflect on the last ten days. When and where was your inner critic active? What was going on around you? How did your body respond to that voice? What emotions did you feel?
For myself, the primary emotion I feel is doubt. When I’m being bold or following my unique value, doubt creeps in and stops me, and I feel my heart speed up and I feel anxious.
If you can bring it to mind well or keep a journal and write down when your inner critic appears, you can begin to understand this character and even name it. For me, it’s Doug the Doubter. But for you, it could be Freddy Fear, Nervous Ned or Scared Sally.
In the same way, you can see what in your environment or circumstances brings this character to the forefront of your mind, and let’s take it to the stage.
Whatever it is to you, by naming it, you show respect for the voice and the journey you have lived that has made it who it is.
Managing Your Inner Critic
Once you have given your inner critic a name, you can practice giving it space.
The best advice I can give you regarding your inner critic is this phrase, ‘thank you, but not now.’
This is how we can learn to quiet the critic in the moment and re-address the feelings later.
I’ve had conversations with my inner critics (and I have more than one than one inner critic). However, only when I have the space and time to get into the issue and sending an email, or delivering a report or presentation isn’t on the line.
Manage the Inner Critic with the SAIL Technique
To help enable a healthy conversation with your critic, I created the SAIL technique to help quiet the voices in the moment so you can stop, acknowledge what is happening, investigate your critics in the situation and then learn from from them, leverage them and let it go:
- S: Stop and breathe.
- A: Acknowledge.
- I: Investigate
- L: Learn, leverage and let go.
Scientists have found that emotion, physically, only lasts 90 seconds in our bodies, but our internal worlds can start that cycle over and over and again if we don’t have a practice for stopping, acknowledging what is happening and dialoguing with what is happening, ‘Oh Sally is here! I wonder what she has to say!’
When we manage the inner critic, we limit our dips into despair. Rather than dropping into a mental cycle owned by Doubting Doug or Scared Sally, we can dip, pause and come back.
In this way, we get the most out of our internal dialogue and can return to our inner critic when we’re ready to investigate what brought them to the stage.
Activating Your Inner Champion
After inner critic work comes inner champion work. This includes knowing yourself, fueling your champion, and discovering your purpose.
Discovering or Knowing Yourself
In exploring ourselves and the unique value we bring to the world, I encourage you to look at it three ways:
- Head – What unique gift, experience or knowledge do you have to bring? Think of it as the intellectual side of yourself:
- What do you know?
- What skills or expertise have you developed?
- What kind of knowledge or understanding do you bring to situations?
- Heart – What is important to you? What are you passionate about? It’s about what motivates you at an emotional level:
- What are you passionate about?
- What causes or topics resonate with you?
- What do you care about most in life, work, or relationships?
- How – What is your unique gift to bring the world? How will you deliver it? Think about how you approach the world:
- How do you naturally approach problems or challenges?
- What makes your way of doing things different from others?
- How do you express your head (knowledge) and heart (passion) in your actions?
A great practice for knowing yourself is to seek insights from your inner circle (4-7 people closest to you) and ask, ‘When you think of me, what unique gifts do you see in me that I may not think of myself?’
Fueling Your Champion
A healthy work-life balance supports a healthy lifestyle. But to truly fuel your inner champion, you must consciously fill your tank in four quadrants: emotional, physical, mental and spiritual.
To be effective, you must fill each quadrant of your tank and find a balance to recharge them all throughout your schedule. Your inner champion runs until the lowest tank is depleted, so a balanced approach is best. It’s hard to run when only one of four batteries is full.
Filling the tanks means more than just avoiding overwork; it means intentionally scheduling recharging activities and giving them as much importance as everything else on your calendar.
For many, exercise is a great way to refuel physically, and podcasts feed us mentally. Spiritually might mean a walk in the forest and emotionally might be walking with someone you love. What will it be for you? What related to your passions can you do to fuel your inner champion in the four quadrants?
Discovering Your Purpose
You can watch Simon Sinek help Jake Humphrey of High Performance find his ‘why’ in 15-minutes, or dig deeper with Simon’s book, Find Your Why.
Simon Sinek is famous for introducing his “Golden Circle” and showing that people often focus on What and How they do things, but not Why.
By asking yourself Simon’s 5 Whys, you can begin to unearth your purpose. This process helps you connect with your inner champion, align your actions with your true purpose, and inspire others along the way.
Go Boldly into the World
You are ready!

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