91. The Five Inner Critics with Shadé Zahrai

We all have voices in our head, you may have not given them names. In this episode, leadership and mindset coach Shadé Zahrai explains how to recognise five common inner critics - and then head back to ep44 for how to silence them!

Sign up for Shadé's new course - STEP INTO YOUR POWER - https://www.shadezahrai.com/waitlist

Transcript

To kick us off we have the amazing Shade Zahrai. Shade is an expert in leadership and mindset, since we spoke not surprisingly her career and impact has continued to boom and she now has a community of more than a million on TikTok which is so awesome AND Shade has just opened doors to her new online course called STEP INTO YOUR POWER – so if you’re  a professional woman I would definitely check that out. I will link to it in the show notes.

And while we’re speaking of courses, my brand new course SPEAK FROM YOUR SOUL is starting on November 7th. If you want to truly connect with your voice, learn to love it and build real inner confidence to share it – then join the waitlist. This course is lighting up my soul. There’s mediations, there’s poetry, there’s live circles where you can practice speaking from your soul and I just know this course is going to change the way you approach speaking on a deep level, oh can’t wait.

So much of the course is about that inner voice, and this is what Shade’s episode was about – number 44 The five inner critics. And I love this concept. If we don’t recognise who’s talking? How can we respond, so now I’ll hand back in time to Shade to take us through five inner critics, I know I recognise some of these and I’m sure you will too.

SHADE:

the first one is the classic judge, and this is extremely common. So this is the inner critic that judges you endlessly, you know what you did, what you didn't do, what you should have done. It's constantly criticizing every decision that you've made, blaming you for things that are actually outside of your control. And it fills you with self doubt. So that's number one because that's by far the most common. Perfectionism that women often experience, not only women though, men also experience that, this falls really squarely within the classic judge's domain. So that's number one.

Number two is the victim. So the victim feels really powerless. The victim is intensely pessimistic and it manifests in a complete lack of motivation and zero hope. So this is something you might experience. If you've, you know, if you've gone through a rejection or you're dealing with immense change, your victim might come out and strip you of that motivation. It also makes you feel like you have no power. So you're constantly saying things like it's not me, it's them. It wasn't me. It was everybody else. And so by doing that, it's reflecting a lack of ownership, but you're also waiting to be rescued. So you don't feel empowered to make changes. And if we don't take action. So that's number two, the victim.

Number three is the Protector. Now the protector is also very common among professional women, especially because the Protector wants to protect you from harm. And that manifests in an extreme form of risk aversion. Now you can imagine when you're in the workplace as a professional woman, we know from research and I know from my clients and even my own experience, women are less likely to take big risks because of the risk of reputational damage, the risk of failure, the risk of being seen as someone foolish. And this is coming from the inner protector that we have. It wants to keep us safe, but in doing so, it's holding you back from taking action and it does that by undermining your confidence and your capabilities. So it makes you feel paralyzed. So that was number three.

We move on to number four, the Ringmaster, this is really common among again, high-performing women who experience imposter syndrome. It's also very common among entrepreneurs. People who are working for themselves, the Ringmaster tells you that your value is based on how disciplined you are. It pushes you to keep on pushing and then to keep on pushing and then some. So what you end up doing is you have convinced yourself that the moment you slow down, you're actually weak and a failure. And so your sense of self worth is dependent on how hard you are pushing, but you can imagine what this does to your sense of self and your sense of, you know, how whole you feel when you're attaching your sense of self worth on your outcomes and your outputs.

And then number five, the Neglecter, I find the Neglecter is much more common in women and it's a result of socialization, how we've been raised, what the media is telling us stereotypes. So the Neglecter tells you that everyone else's needs are more important than yours, and it reminds you that you're not worthy of care. So you actually prioritize the happiness of everyone around you, and you feel undeserving of any investment into yourself, whether that's from others or even yourself. I found that because of this, a lot of women, they are not, maybe they're not giving themselves what they need to be their best. And this also comes from that nurturing caregiving side, that women, a lot of women have this very much people-oriented side, make sure everyone else is okay. I come last. If everyone else is happy, then I'm happy. You know, this also manifests in this desire for social validation and approval that a lot of women have.

So that was a very, very high level summary of the five. But it's so interesting when I've started to articulate this to women and they, some of them are like, wow, ouch. I resonate with all of them or that's exactly what I'm experiencing. And so what I love about some of the work that I do is it's taking the human experience and then just helping people make sense of that. And also realize that they're not abnormal. They're not, you know, they're not really different because they experienced these things. It's not a terrible thing. It's extremely common, but what we need to do about it is to your point, it's, you know, okay, we know this, what are the strategies that we have to actually overcome it? Because awareness is one thing. That's the first step, obviously. But then if we leave it at awareness, we're only going to be aware of those thoughts going through our heads. We don't know how to actually tackle them.