No one is harder on me than I am. To be more precise, no one is harder on my than my internally bully.
We all have an inner bully. It’s that voice that says,
“You can’t do that!”
“You’re not that talented”
“You should be ashamed of yourself!”
“You aren’t capable to do that!”
There are million ways our inner bully beats up on us and the problem is that we listen to this bully way too much. The inner bully goes by different names: The inner critic, the ego, the devil on my shoulder, and so on. You might have your own name for it.
In any case, the inner bully is that voice that when we listen to it we get more depressed, more discouraged, and more anxious about life. When we will listen to this negative voice it holds us back in achieving our goals and robs us of peace and joy.
But why do we have an inner bully?
There is a part of our brain that we call the ego or the inner critic. It’s the thought center that sends us all of the negative thoughts which we hear. I used to wonder why from an evolutionary standpoint we would have such a center in our brain. What good does it do for us to hear this critical inner voice. And then I came across this concept in the myriad of books I’ve been reading over the years.
It’s there to protect us.
Wha…? There was a time in our evolution where we needed our brains to be hyper vigilant. We needed to know, “Is that sound in the bush a squirrel or a cougar?”. “Is that plant OK to eat or is it poisonous?”
If we didn’t have the ability to detect danger or intuit potential disaster we wouldn’t have made it as a species. Thanks to our brain we made it out of the stone age.
But here we are hundreds of thousands of years later (if not millions) and we have this inner voice sending us all of these negative thoughts. How does that make sense?
In a convoluted way the brain is still trying to protect us from:
- failure
- disappointment
- looking stupid
- being hurt emotionally
There is no tiger chasing us anymore but we have so many situations where we are presented obstacles that our brain/ego thinks there may be a threat to us. Threats like:
- interviews
- relationships
- our health
- other people
- work
In general it picks up on anything or anyone that causes potential stress in our lives. The negative thoughts are there to tell us to keep our distance, be wary , or run away so we don’t experience any of the potential pain. Our inner bully is trying to help us, but unfortunately it’s keeping us from living up to our potential (if we listen to it).
Become friends with your inner bully
What I mean by this is to listen to what your inner bully is saying, but don’t take it to heart. You can thank your mind for trying to help and then let the thought dissipate. Don’t hang on to it. In is book, The Happiness Trap, Dr. Russ Harris teaches to observe our thoughts in terms on if they are helpful to us or hurtful. If the thought is helpful you can dwell on it and take it to heart. If the thought is unhelpful you let it go and don’t focus on it.
The biggest thing to lean here is that your inner bully and all those crazy, negative thoughts are not you. You are the person observing the thoughts (that very Zen). And because you can observe what you are thinking you can choose which thought you’ll pay attention to and which thoughts you’ll ignore.
The inner bully/critic is there for a reason established a long time ago. We can achieve more in life if we ignore the negative thoughts and create more positive/life enriching thoughts. If we do we have a lot less angst and more joy and peace in life.