Are you hungry for greater satisfaction, purpose, happiness, and ease in your life? The Enneagram can help you to enhance your life. Enneagram tritypes help you to see the similarities and differences between the nine types. You will find the … Continue reading
The inner critic is part of your ego. Your ego is your personality. You could not survive in the world without it.
In the first few months of life, you take on one of nine different personalities. Your personality gives you a way to engage with the world. It helps you to know how you are different from others. It helps you to make choices in your life. It helps you to stay safe.
Your inner critic is a big jerk! The trouble begins when you reach maturity. If you do not become aware of your personality and how it impacts you, you will miss much in life. You will also get yourself into trouble because of uninformed choices. You will lose opportunities in life because you are stuck in old habits and thought patterns that no longer serve you.
Your inner critic is the part of the ego that tries to keep you safe by keeping you stuck in your personality. It wants to be your friend.
The trouble is that the inner critic prefers the familiar rather than uncharted territory. The familiar being the automatic habits that you do without thinking. If you remain imprisoned in your personality, you are going to be miserable.
With practice, you will start to notice when your inner critic is talking to you. The inner critic is that negative voice that is always telling you that you are not good enough, that you are stupid, and that nobody loves you.
Each personality type has particular issues that the inner critic likes to attack.
Type One:
The inner critic for the One is always complaining that you are not doing it correctly. It is always telling you that you need to improve. You need to do better. It can put a lot of pressure on you by saying to you that something terrible is going to happen if you don’t get it right.
When the inner critic is getting harsh with you, you are more likely going to get tough on others. The One fears that the poor choices of others are going to reflect poorly on you. They are going to interfere with all the excellent work you are doing to make the world a better place.
Type Two:
The inner critic of Two is always trying to tell you that you are not loveable. It wants to prevent you from being hurt by working extra hard to be accepted. It will also tell you that you have to earn love from those around you. It will keep insisting that you need to go out of your way to help others.
It further insists that if t+e people don’t respond in the way you would like them to you need to go and tell them off. The inner critic will encourage you to confront anyone who is not obedient to you. The inner critic wants to make you feel like a Queen or King and that everyone around you should treat you like that.
In the end, the inner critic will lead you to self-hatred telling you off that the person left you or didn’t do what you wanted because you were not good enough. You were not worthy of their love. It can leave you in a sad place.
Type Three:
The inner critic for the three is always evaluating your success. It wants you to notice if people are acknowledging how hard you are working. Have you met your sales goals? Have you done everything possible to be the best at what you do?
Whenever you try to slow down, your inner critic will keep pushing you to work hard. Trying to take an afternoon nap is almost impossible.
Whenever you achieve your goals, your inner critic will push you to do something even grander. Every new task you take on you will need to work harder. You will need to change your behavior to fit whatever business/project you are working on.
Type Four:
The inner critic for the four is always trying to compare yourself with others. It keeps insisting that you will never fit in. It will tell you over and over that nobody will ever understand you. It will emphasize that you need to prove to the world how different you are.
The Four’s inner critic will encourage you to indulge in your favorite emotions. Your moods will reflect back to you what your inner critic is harassing you to think.
It will try to convince you that only through your moods you will know that you are indeed alive.
The inner critic is a big jerk. The inner critic forgets to tell you that your feelings are always changing. It avoids mentioning to you that staying stuck in depressive emotions for long periods of time only leads to misery for yourself and those around you.
Type Five:
The inner critic for the Five is always calling on you to retreat to your inner self. It wants you to stay safe by learning a topic well. It wants you to learn all that is possible to learn and do not talk about it until you feel knowledgeable enough.
The inner critic wants to instill in you a fear of being found out that you don’t know enough. It doesn’t want you to be embarrassed. It doesn’t want you to be humiliated. So to do this, you need to very cautious about what you say and to whom.
The Five inner critic is only concerned with your mind. It will continually dissuade from paying attention to your body and your heart.
The danger for a five is that you can become an island to yourself disconnected from family and friends.
Type Six:
The inner critic for the six is keeping you alert for all the dangers you and your loved ones face. It will try to keep you hypervigilant watching carefully for any threat that might come your way.
The Six inner critic will get you to question your abilities. It will get you to check out any decisions you are about to make with friends, families and so-called experts. You will be compelled to get as many opinions as possible.
Your inner critic will judge you for experiencing anxiety. It will get you to try and fix yourself making the anxiety worse and worse. The inner critic’s judgment will cause you to try and fix others making you feel even worse.
When feeling threatened, your inner critic encourages you to protect yourself from being hurt through cynicism. Your cynicism will turn friends, family, and colleagues away from you.
Type Seven:
The inner critic for Seven will do everything in its power to keep you busy, having fun, going on adventures. This is all to keep you from feeling any emotional and/or physical pain.
The seven’s inner critic is desperate to keep you away from any problematic emotions. It causes you to get bored quickly. It lets you off the hook if you are bored with a task. It invites you to abandon the job because there is always something more exciting to do.
The inner critic of the seven lets you off any responsibility for completing any task.
The inner critic makes it clear that any person who tries to force them to slow down or force them to complete a task is no friend. A friend of a seven is someone who joins them on their adventures and does what they want them to do.
Type Eight:
The inner critic for the Eight wants to protect their vulnerable feelings, emotions, and heart. The inner critic is only too happy to help you to put up protective walls to prevent you from being emotionally hurt.
The inner critic is also there to ensure that no one will stop you on any of your projects. It is there to help you to force your way ahead even if means hurting others.
The eights inner critic is a force to be reckoned with. The inner critic will blind you to the power you are using. You will have no idea of how others are experiencing you.
The inner critic is a big jerk. Your inner critic will make it difficult for you to slow down. It’s the only language is power and force. It thinks that confrontation is the only way to go. It is nervous at any time for inner reflection. It doesn’t’ want your heart to be hurt ever again.
Type Nine:
The inner critic for the nine energy is trying to keep you safe by convincing you that you are unimportant. That no one really cares about you. That the only way for you to survive is to keep everyone calm at any cost to you.
The inner critic will try hard to make you feel insignificant. If you have no importance to others, you are not going to create any conflict.
The inner critic will get angry with you if you are allowing any conflict to happen in any group you are part of. If there is a conflict, there is a danger. If there is a conflict, you had better fix it.
The inner critic will make it difficult for you to speak your mind because it is too risky. It will insist that calm is more important than expressing your needs.
The trouble is that eventually after days and months of not having your needs respected and wants to be taken seriously you explode. You easily become passive-aggressive.
You have an inner critic. The inner critic wants to keep you safe. It tries to keep you safe by insisting you stay in your Enneagram type which it knows best. Fighting your inner-critic will only make it worse.
You can find freedom from your inner critic by learning to notice how it is impacting the decisions you are making in life. The inner critic is a big jerk – until you understand it. The Enneagram can point out to you through your type, how the inner-critic is operating in your life. The more you are aware of it, the more you are free to choose different options.
The inner critic will never disappear, often showing itself in stressful times. But with practice, you can befriend your inner critic by paying attention to it and letting it know that you as an adult are most capable of making right decisions.
The more you stay grounded in your three energy centers the inner critic will have less need to mess around with your life. When your three energy centers heart, body, and mind are working well, there is no place for the inner critic. It knows you are safe and in good hands. It recognizes that the universe will take care of you.
Roland Legge offers life/executive coaching and Enneagram workshops through REL Consultants. For more information, please arrange for a free 30-minute discovery call by emailing Roland Legge at rolandlegge@relconsultants.com or book your appointment online Please click on “Discovery Call.”
This Article was first published in the REL Consultants (Roland Legge) Blog
Life is full of surprises! What was your first significant change? It was probably your birth into the world.
Life transitions are hard. The moment, you arrive in the world you experience your first significant change. It must be a shock to all the senses being forced out into this alien world. The process of birth is just the beginning of your adventure.
Life transitions include:
Birth:
Can you imagine being in the comfort and safety of your mother’s womb? It is nice and warm. With all your needs met, you are secure. Then imagine suddenly without warning being pushed out into a foreign world.
For the first time in your life, separated from your mother you are alone. Can you imagine the sense of abandonment you felt? You have to cry to get your needs met.
If you could remember this part of your life, it might leave you with some unsettling dreams. Coming into the world Is a massive change. Any change takes a period of adjustment whether or not you label the transition as good or bad.
It might be like being kidnapped and thrown out of a plane with a parachute into a jungle where you have no idea where you are. How would you be feeling?
Childhood years:
How much of your early years do you remember? Some of what you remember may come from stories that your parents told you. Now imagine what it was like for you to learn to walk? What was it like to learn to ride a two-wheeler bike? What do you remember?
You are learning to become more independent. These are never easy years. Imagine how many times you fell over before you were able to walk on your own. Learning to walk, is like most new things you learn to do, takes a lot of practice.
Do you remember learning to ride a two-wheeler bike? Did you first start with learners wheels? How many scrapes did you have before you were able to ride down the street without falling off the bike? Give your child self-lots of appreciation for all the risks they took to take their place in the world. Learning new skills is not easy!
Teen Years:
Take a moment to reflect on all physical, social, emotional and hormonal changes that happen during these exciting years. Your body changes so quickly it can be confusing for you to know how to behave.
Sexual desire in you comes to life! You enjoy these new feelings, and yet they baffle you. You pick up from the adults in your life that this is something to feel ashamed. You are mixed up. How can something that feels so good be so wrong?
You might even feel growing pains in your bones because you are changing so fast. You are not quite sure if you are still a child or an adult.
Peer pressure at school can be challenging. You want to be cool with your mates.
Life transitions are hard. If you are not one of the cool kids, you can feel very isolated. You can feel invisible. Bullies can make your life difficult. Anxiety can overtake your life because you feel like there is something wrong with you.
Moving away from home:
Do you remember moving away from home for the first time? It probably is one of the most exciting times in your life? Yet, leaving the safety of home is perhaps one of the most stressful times in your life.
For the first time, you have to take care of your own needs. You need to wash your own clothes. You need to cook your own meals. You have to manage your own schedule. Even if this feels good, change of this magnitude takes a lot of energy.
If you moved to another city, there is the stress of learning to get around a new place. Where do I need to go to get groceries? How are you going to get around?
Then there is the stress of money. When you lived at home, your parents took care of most of your needs. You will have to learn to budget. You might even need to find some part-time work to help you to make ends meet.
Marriage:
Marriage is one of the most significant decisions you will make in your life. Once you get past the falling in love stage where everything seems exciting; the success of your marriage will depend on your commitment to growing individually and as a couple.
Your relationship will find strength, depending on how well you are able to know your own needs, show a willingness to compromise, seek to bring out the best in each other and communicate well. Communication is probably one of the most significant challenges you will face.
It takes time to get used to living with someone else. You need time to find your new rhythm as a couple. You will need to find ways that honor the needs of both of you. You will need to experiment until you find a balance that works for you both.
One of the many challenges of marriage is that you get to see each other in the worst and best of times. You get to experience each other’s peculiarities. Maybe the things that you once thought to be amusing is now annoying.
Do you like conflict? I am guessing you don’t. There is guaranteed to be conflict in your relationship. Conflict happens when there are two people with different opinions. You as a couple need to find a way to talk so you can see solutions that will work for you both. Trying to impose your point of view may fix things for the short time, but it will eventually backfire when the person who was imposed on pushes back.
Having children:
If you think getting married is complicated, then having children is even more challenging. When a child arrives into your life your world dramatically changes. It is your child/children who are the center of your attention.
There will be a time when you get little sleep. You will no longer be able to do as you please. If you want to have a date you need to find someone to care for your child or children. Your children will be on your mind for the rest of your life no matter what they do good or bad.
If you haven’t had any conflict about the division of labor in your family having children will likely raise it. Hopefully, you have thought about it before the child arrives. Are you going to equally share the work including child care, cooking, cleaning, shopping, outdoor work and more?
Sharing the labor doesn’t mean you have to divide all tasks in half. But you need to come to an agreement that is fair to both parties. Watch out that the women don’t take on more than her fair share.
Life transitions are hard. Make sure you take time to care for yourself, besides caring for your children and partner. A healthy you is the best gift you can give to the family.
Divorce:
There is no such thing as an easy divorce. Even the most respectful ones take a lot of energy. There is nothing shameful about getting divorced. I hope you would have tried to resolve the issues before you made the final decision.
Sometimes your relationship needs to come to an end for many reasons from the loss of trust, affairs, domestic violence and sometimes people just grow apart.
Divorce impacts the relationships you have with the friends and family you shared with your partner. Depending on how well the relationship ends will determine who you are able to stay in touch with.
Divorce impacts your children. No matter how well you do it, the children’s lives are going to be changed forever. If you are your partner were not getting along, the divorce will still be better for the children.
All your routines get changed. Tasks you used to share you have to do yourself. There is no one to ask about your day. There is no one to share something important that took place at work or at home. Money can be a problem if you are the one that stayed at home with the kids or you had the lowest paying of the two or more jobs.
During times of divorce, your emotions will be up and down. There will be days when you will find it hard to get out of bed. One moment you will be crying, the next laughing and the subsequent angry. It is like being on an emotional roller coaster.
Death of loved ones:
Grieving takes a lot of energy. When someone that is close to us dies, it is never easy. It especially tricky when a person dies young from disease, accident, murder and/or suicide. Even when a person dies after a beautiful long life, we all must go through grief.
There is no way around grief. The only way is to go through it. It can take up to a year to go through the cycles of loss. Our lives will never be the same, but you will find a way to move ahead in life. Here is the process we go through, not always in this order:
· Denial
· Anger
· Depression
· Bargaining
· Acceptance
You may be tired. You may be moody. You may be angry. You may have a hard time accepting what has happened.
Give yourself lots of time to move through this. This is not a time to make big decisions. Find friends, religious leaders, counselors and coaches to help you to explore these intense feelings. Grieving is hard work but so worthwhile.
Retirement:
Retirement is all about transition. Do you know what you are going to do when you retire? You might decide to start your own business and work, only, when you want. There may be organizations that you have always wanted to volunteer for and have never had the time.
If you are one of the people who has spent the majority of their working life focussed on their job, retirement could be a very stressful time. You may feel a loss of identity. You might feel depressed. So it is better for you to start volunteering and finding other interests before you retire.
You are likely to have more time with your spouse. This may be great, but you may find your spouse driving you crazy. Does it feel like they are under your feet too often? Each of you will want to discover your own interests so that each of you has time apart. You will also have different experiences to share with each other.
You might find it challenging to organize your day now that you are retired. There is no longer any requirement for you to be at work at a particular time. You might want to set a regular schedule for yourself each week. Like when you are going to get up? What are you going to do?
It is at these times of significant changer in our lives we are more likely to face depression and other mental health issues. If you are getting down don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Give yourself time to get used to your new life. Remember life transitions are hard. Make the best of this season by seeing this as an opportunity to re-focus on what is really important to you.
Your life is full of transitions. No matter what change you are going through it takes time and energy to make the adjustments.
You may be one of many who do not realize the energy it takes to go through:
· Birth
· Childhood
· Teen years
· Moving away from Home
· Marriage
· Children
· Divorce
· Death of Loved Ones
· Retirement
Life transitions are hard! So during these times of change, you may feel like you are going crazy. I assure you, you are not going crazy. The only way to get through these times of change is to fully experience the ups and downs that your body, heart, and mind will take you through.
Give yourself space to make your ways through these vulnerable times. Let others know what you are experiencing. Allow yourself more time to sleep. Eat well. Enjoy time with good friends and family. Cry when you need to. Laugh. Seek support when you are feeling alone.
Congratulations, you have made it this far in life. You have been through a lot!
You have become a stronger and more compassionate person through all of your life experiences. You are the amazing person you are because of all the ups and downs you have faced. Go and celebrate each moment of life. Be kind to yourself, with gentleness, when you are facing difficult times and truly celebrate the good times.
Roland Legge offers presence based life coaching through REL Consultants for individuals, couples, and organizations to help them to be the best they can be. For more information, please arrange for a free 30-minute discovery call by phoning Roland at 1 306 620-7478 or book your appointment online at https://www.relconsultants.com/coach-roland-legge Please click on “Discovery Call.”
Originally Published by REL Consultants http://www.relconsultants.com
Roland Legge 