How can we deal with our inner critic?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So when I want to grow in my spiritual life but there is an inner critic which stops me from moving forward says you know you don’t have time you can’t do this. So how can we deal with it? Actually this inner critic will stop us from doing any good thing in life.
Suppose you know suppose we decide okay I’m going to speak in public. Inner critic you make a fool of yourself and forget everything people will laugh at you this that whatever we try to do the inner critic comes in. See all of us have a creative side which inspires us gives us ideas do this do this do this and we have a critical side which is no this is not working out right.
Now both are important the creative side gives us ideas and the critical side helps us to evaluate the ideas. So the important thing is like as a writer for me creative side gives me ideas creative side gives me ideas and sometimes ideas are just too far out it’s not going to work some critical side evaluates that. The problem comes when the critical side doesn’t allow the creative side to express itself only.
So what so one way to resolve this is just to separate that one that means when we are creating so when I am writing just write don’t worry how good it is just write it down and then afterwards I can edit it I can evaluate it so like that what we could do is when the ideas are coming we we take the inspiration and try to use the inspiration fully not that we need to take a giant step forward in our spiritual life but just when the inspiration is a start off take a small step so if you feel I can do this much tomorrow like from tomorrow onwards from today onwards okay don’t do that maybe take some small step forward and what happens when we actually do things we often find out that things are in real life not as difficult as the mind makes them out to be so when we do the things we find it okay you know ultimately you know if okay I’m going to chant this many rounds how can I chant that many rounds okay but then if you actually start chanting it’s not all that difficult it can be done so just start we started off then the fear goes off so generally speaking the one of the best ways to silence the critical side is to just take off just start off in some small way or the other and then once we start off we get a taste for it we can move on that’s one way to do it the other way to do it is another thing which you could do to deal with the critical side is to turn that critical voice on itself what that means is that okay you know that okay saying this will go wrong this will go wrong this will go wrong this is possible but if I just keep hearing what all will go wrong you know ultimately also something is going to go wrong that is what I’m never going to do anything good see the critical voice wants us to take the safe option but actually as far as life in this material world is concerned the no option is not a safe option because every time is going to pass we’re going to go we are eventually going to grow old we’re going to get diseased we’re going to die so the material of life of the option of living materialistically it may seem to be a safe option because everyone else is doing it that doesn’t mean it is a safe option it is the option which is eventually going to lead to frustration on you so we turn the critical voice you’re saying don’t do anything but what is the result of that that’s not necessarily that’s not a safe option at all so let me start off and the last thing which we can do to deal with the critical voice is to to categorize it categorize it means that when that voice comes in see when we identify that when we identify with that that’s when the problem comes up but suppose there are some people we know that they are always negative people whatever whatever whatever whatever whatever is brought before them they will find problems with it they will find and this is not going to work because of this this is not going to work because of this there are probably people who are always so negative it is said that there are some people they bring happiness where they go and some people bring happiness when they go isn’t it so when they go so like that some people are negative so what we should do is if we identify this person as negative then we don’t take their criticism so seriously like that when that negative voice starts coming up what do we do this is a critic speaking we just identify that and create a distance from that and then we take its voice with a pinch of salt so identifying that voice is very helpful ultimately when we are facing problems in life a lot depends on whom we consult now say a boxing match is going on two boxers are fighting and one boxer knocks down the other boxer faced when we say some problem at that time you know it is often because of the critical voice only that we have faced the problem and then we ask the critical voice only can I do it never quit now so we need to consult Krishna we need to consult Krishna as a representative we need to consult those who encourage us then we will be able to proceed here Sanskrit question okay Krishna