Introduction
Welcome to The Overachievers Podcast, for those times when achieving everything is still not enough.
You know that voice in your head, the one that reviews everything you do? Today I want to ask you a strange question about it.
Have you ever noticed it has an accent?
Every high performer has a version of this voice. It pipes up the moment you finish something. That could have been better. It’s there before you speak in a meeting. Don’t say anything unless you’re sure. It reviews the conversation on the way home. Why did you put it like that?
And here is what you probably believe about it. You believe it’s you. Your thoughts, your assessment, your standards. It speaks in the first person, after all. It knows everything you know, and it sounds like the inside of your own head.
But listen more closely, because the voice gives itself away. And when you hear what it actually is, something changes.
Key Themes
- The critical voice that reviews everything you do
- Why it sounds like you but isn’t
- Rachel’s red pen manager, still reviewing her work a decade later
- Your own judgment versus absorbed judgment
- Placing the voice rather than obeying it
If You Prefer Video
Connected Blog
Whose Standards Are You Actually Meeting?
Real judgement responds to the evidence. The inner critic wrote its verdict years ago. How to tell the two apart.
Related Blogs and Episodes
The Voice That Sounds Like Standards
Perfectionism doesn’t sound like criticism. It sounds like care. That’s exactly what makes it so hard to question.
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Episode 006 – When High Standards Turn Into Self-Pressure
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Episode 008 – Separating Identity from Achievement
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Transcript
This is the Overachievers Podcast for people who want success without the burnout. You know that voice in your head, the one that reviews everything you do? Today I want to ask you a strange question about it. Have you ever noticed it has an accent? Welcome to the Overachievers Podcast with Keith Blakemore-Noble. Because success shouldn’t cost everything. Welcome back. I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, The Overachievers Coach. Last time in the previous episode, we met the audience of one, that internalised audience that you perform for, the one assembled over years from the people whose judgment once meant safety. And I finished that episode by telling you that this audience has a spokesperson.
Today we get to meet that spokesperson, the critical voice, the commentator that reviews your work, your decisions, and on the bad days, reviews you. We’re going to listen to it closely because when you do, you discover something about it that changes everything. A quick note before we dive in. If, if this show is proving useful, hit follow or subscribe on whatever platform you’re on. Just takes a second. And it means the next episode arrives without you having to remember to look for it. Every high performer that I have worked with has a version of this voice. It pipes up in the moment you finish something.
That could have been better. It’s there before you speak in the meeting. Don’t say anything unless you’re sure. It reviews the conversation on your way home. Why did you put it like that? And here’s what you probably believe about that voice. You believe that it’s you. You believe it’s your thoughts, your assessment, your standards. It speaks in the first person, after all.
It knows everything that you know, and it sounds like the inside of your own head. So, of course, you take its verdicts as your own conclusion. But listen more closely, because the voice gives itself away. It has favourite phrases. It has particular accusations that it returns to again and again. It has a tone, and if you pay real attention, that tone belongs to somebody. The phrasing was learned, the standards were absorbed, the voice speaks judgments that you didn’t write, which is precisely why I say it has an accent, and that accent, it’s not yours. Let me show you what I mean.
A director, I’ll call them Rachel, Rachel’s preparing a board paper. Now it’s good work, she knows it’s good work, and still, as she reads it through, that commentary starts. This is sloppy, they’ll pull it apart, you’ve missed something, you always miss something. And then, mid-sentence, she stops. Because she’s heard that exact phrase before. You always miss something. That was her first manager, word for word. The one who reviewed her work over a decade ago with a red pen and a raised eyebrow.
She left that job 10 years back. He hasn’t seen a single thing that she has produced since then. He probably couldn’t pick her out of a lineup these days, and yet there he is in her head on a Tuesday evening reviewing a board paper that he will never read, in his voice, with his phrasing, applying his standards. Rachel thought she was hearing her own judgment when what she was actually hearing was a recording. So let me hand this to you for a moment. Think of the thing your critical voice says the most often, the greatest hits if you want, the phrase it reaches for when you’ve made a mistake or when you’re about to be seen. Now ask yourself, and do take your time with this one, whose phrase is that? Where did you hear it first? In whose voice did you originally hear it? It might take a few moments to figure that out, but that’s okay, just ponder on that. Whose phrase is it? And there is usually an answer, It might take some moments to arrive, but there’s usually an answer.
The key distinction at the centre of this episode is the difference between your, your judgment and the judgment you’ve absorbed. Your own judgment, hey, that’s something you built. It comes from your experience, from your understanding of your work, comes from your sense of what good looks like. in this particular situation today. It evaluates the thing in front of you on its merits, and when it finds a flaw, the flaw is specific and the fix is usually obvious. Absorbed judgment— that works differently. It arrived early from people whose approval once felt like safety, and it was installed rather than chosen. It doesn’t really evaluate the work at all, because its verdicts were written years before this piece of work ever existed.
Not good enough was the conclusion long before it saw the evidence. This same distinction can be put another way. It can be expressed as the difference between hearing the voice as truth and hearing it as an internalised other. Heard as truth, every criticism lands as information about your work. Heard as what it actually is, a recording of someone else’s standards, the same words carry far less weight. And to be clear, there is nothing wrong with having taken those voices in. You didn’t do anything foolish. Absorbing the standards of the people who mattered, that’s how we all learn to navigate the world.
It keeps you safe and it probably drove a good deal of your success. The question is simply whether a verdict recorded decades ago should still be chairing the review meeting today. Now, let’s connect this back to where we started this section, this block of episodes, because the critical voice and the audience, they’re the same structure seen from 2 angles. That critical voice and that audience of one, it’s the same thing. You’re just viewing it from 2 different perspectives. The audience of one is who you perform for. The voice is how their anticipated verdict reaches you. It’s the delivery mechanism, if you like.
When the voice says, they’ll pull it apart, it’s speaking on behalf of that audience of one. It’s forecasting the judgment so vividly that you feel judged before anyone Has ever seen anything. And notice what the voice is actually after. It wants the performance to go well. It wants approval, or more precisely, it wants the safety that approval once represented. Every harsh note it gives you, every preemptive criticism, that’s an attempt to get you approved of by getting to you before they do. Which explains something that puzzles a lot of high performers. Why is the voice loudest around the things you care most about? Because that’s where the stakes, as the voice measures them, are highest.
The biggest presentation, the visible project, the work with your name on it. The more it matters, the more there is to lose in front of the audience and the louder the spokesperson gets. So the harshness you live with, that was never a sign that something was wrong with you, but it’s a sign of how much approval came to mean a long time ago to someone who was doing their best to stay safe. And that someone, by the way, was you. And that voice has been running the same protection strategy ever since, whether or not you still needed it. So, okay, what shifts here? Again, it’s awareness before action. This week, when that voice pops up, I invite you to try just one small move. Don’t argue with it, don’t obey it, just place it.
Ask yourself, whose phrasing is that? Whose standards is it applying? You’re doing nothing more than Rachel did mid-sentence, noticing that the commentary has a source and that the source is not the present moment. Some people find it helps to give that recording a name, not to mock it, Simply to file it accurately. Aha, that’s the red pen manager again. The moment the voice is placed, something loosens because a recording can be listened to without having to be obeyed. And hey, it’s important to notice you don’t lose your standards by doing this. Your actual judgment, the one you built, it’s still there. And if anything, it gets clearer once it’s no longer being shouted over by this voice from decades ago. Next time we are going to tackle the trickiest version of this voice, because sometimes it doesn’t sound like criticism at all.
It can sound like wisdom, prudence, strategy, or even good sense. How do you tell your actual judgment from a critic pretending to be your judgment? Well, that’s what we explore in episode 31, the next episode, When the Inner Critic Sounds Like Wisdom. That’s coming up in the next episode. For now, here’s a question for you to ponder until then. When the critical voice speaks to you this week, just ask yourself, is this an assessment of the work in front of me, Or is it a recording of someone I stopped answering to years ago? This territory, where the voice came from and how you change your relationship with it, it’s exactly what we’re exploring in depth this month inside the Overachievers Club in a series called The Approval Pattern. Now, if today gives you a glimpse of something, the club is where the real work on it is happening right now. You can find out more at keithbn.link/TOC. You find out more details about the Overachievers Club and everything related to it.
And as always, if this episode resonates, hey, a review or a rating on your preferred platform makes a real difference in helping others to find the show. And it helps me to see just how it’s coming across for you. Do share this one with someone whose inner critic is working overtime. And remember to hit follow or subscribe if you haven’t already. Final thing to do is to head over to KeithBN.link/TOP. You’ll find all of the episodes, find this episode, and in there you’ll find the show notes along with some additional resources that are worth exploring. I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, The Overachievers Coach, and I will be your guide as we explore a healthier way to succeed.
