Alain de Botton: Your Inner Critic Is Borrowed (And Here's How to Give It Back) | Be Well Moments

0:01This is a Be Well Moment, the most replayed moments from my latest conversation. It's a glimpse into the wider episode, which you can find linked in the show notes below. Because sometimes one small moment is enough to reconnect to living well and being well.

0:22How important do you think self-compassion is for our mental health?

0:27Alain de Botton:Look, I think what we mean by self-compassion is an ability to interpret one's own flaws, mistakes, weaker sides, with the kind of kindness that we would give to a friend, even frankly a stranger. And the always interesting thing is why we cannot be as kind to ourselves as we can to any random stranger. So a random stranger, if they said to us, you know, I've made a mistake at work, I've done something wrong in life, we'd go, oh, poor you. We'd immediately go, oh, poor you. That would be very natural to us. We'd go, you blithering idiot, what are you doing? We speak to ourselves with the harshest possible voice, which is often an internalized voice.

1:10Alain de Botton:You know, the way we speak to ourselves is largely to do with having incorporated the voice of somebody else who spoke to us normally when we were small. and some of us have had the misfortune to have inner voices that are not very helpful what are you doing you silly idiot why did you forget you ought to tie your shoelaces don't touch the kitchen cabinet get out of my way I'm busy you silly little nonsense etc unfortunately there are childhoods in which those messages are being drawn in and then that becomes you see people who have bad childhoods suffer twice they suffer in the childhood and then they suffer because the negativity has been incorporated in their own mind and they then start to be the negative caregiver to themselves.

1:53Alain de Botton:And they take that out into relationships and the workplace, etc. So that they've got what Freud called the super ego, the voice inside themselves that is the voice of an unkind person of authority. Sometimes people have good internal voices, but many of us have quite bad ones. So it's really interesting to ask oneself, how do I speak to myself when I mess up? Do I speak kindly to myself or do I hate myself? And whose is that voice? It's not yours. It's a voice you've heard and you've taken it inside yourself. And then you need to say to yourself, do I agree with that voice? And you might need to say it, do a little bit of a goodbye ceremony and go, thank you, voice.

2:36Alain de Botton:I know I've taken you inside me. I don't want this voice. Life's too short. Get out. it's true i sometimes find it really helpful to name that voice so i don't feel like it's part of me yeah that's right and it won't be it'll be the voice of a great aunt a parent usually it's a mother or father but we don't need to point that make that point too hard how important is that to recognize though because a lot of people will say well that voice drives me it motivates me it connects me to being a better person in all ways and the way i work and the way i am Yeah. Look, there's a lot of equivocation around the value of a whip.

3:12Alain de Botton:A whip could be a good thing, gets people going, whip yourself a little bit harder and off you go. And then there's the moment where the whip ceases to be very helpful at all. It's got to be a balance, isn't it? There's got to be motivation and part of motivation has got to be moments of self-hatred, self-criticism, etc. But there are those of us who are suffering from an excess. It's become really unhelpful. You know, think of the number of books that don't get written because people are so worried they're going to be bad. Think of the number of businesses that don't get started because people think, oh, that's a silly idea.

3:44Alain de Botton:Think of a number of initiatives sort of quashed at birth because somebody is ahead of their own more hopeful sides with that critical voice. So, you know, for every person who didn't bother to get up off bed because, you know, they were just too easy on themselves. there's a million fantastic things that have not happened because people were too critical of their projects and their dreams how do you advise people to deal with criticism um first of all don't be too stoic too quickly it really hurts sometimes people go i can't believe it you know i heard somebody saying something bad about me last month and it's just moving around my brain even now and i'm just i'm such an idiot you want to go don't worry we're built like this this is very normal.

4:28Alain de Botton:We are acutely sensitive to criticism. There are probably biological reasons for that. The view of the tribe mattered immensely. When we lived in a village of 15 people, if one of those people had a very bad opinion about you, you should probably know about it and worry about it. The irony, as in so many impulses that we have physiologically almost, they outgrow their uses. So it was also tremendously useful to eat any sugary thing that came your way, because that way you would preserve your calories. Nowadays, disaster, right? You must not do that thing that you're impulsive. Same thing around gossip and criticism.

5:01Alain de Botton:It doesn't matter. If somebody 800 ,000 miles away, you know, posted something negative on a blog about you, forget it, forget it. It doesn't matter. It's not anything that you need to worry about. But we bring to the conditions of the modern city and the modern internet world some of that sensitivity that was essentially honed in the savannah and it doesn't belong and it causes problems that are unnecessary. Thank you for listening to this Be Well Moment. If it resonated, the full conversation is linked in the show notes. And I hope it gave you a small pause to take a moment for you and to reconnect to living well and being well.

5:39If you loved it, please do leave a review, follow the show or share this maybe with someone you love.