Introduction
Welcome to The Overachievers Podcast, for those times when achieving everything is still not enough.
In episode 30, we saw that the inner critic often uses someone else’s accent. In this episode, we discover that the voice has another trick up its sleeve. You see, sometimes it doesn’t even sound like criticism at all. Sometimes it sounds much more like wisdom…
The harsh version of the critic is relatively easy to spot. It attacks, it accuses, and you can push back. The other version though is different. It doesn’t attack your decisions, instead it makes them for you; and worse, it makes them sound sensible. It speaks calmly, it weighs things carefully, and it always, without exception, reaches the same conclusion.
“Don’t be seen. Don’t risk being judged. Stay where your approval is already secure”.
In this episode, we look at how to tell the disguise from the real thing, and we give you one practical test that will help you to catch it in the act.
Key Themes
- When the critical voice sounds like wisdom rather than attack
- Three speaking invitations met with three sensible refusals – what’s going on?
- Discernment versus disguised criticism
- The standard that serves the work, versus the standard that manages the audience
- One practical test to spot whether the response is genuine
If You Prefer Video
Connected Blog
When Your Inner Critic Sounds Like Wisdom
The most dangerous inner critic sounds like strategy, not criticism. Here is the test that unmasks it.
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Episode 018 – The Visibility Barrier
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Episode 026 – Done Is Not Failure
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Transcript
This is the Overachievers Podcast for people who want success without the burnout. In the previous episode, we caught the critical voice using someone else’s accent. But the voice has another trick, a far better one. Sometimes it doesn’t sound like criticism at all. Sometimes it sounds like wisdom. And that is when it does its best work. 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. And last time we discovered that the critical voice speaks in borrowed judgments, recordings of standards that you absorbed rather than standards you chose. And most people, once they’ve heard that episode, feel ready to spot that voice a mile off. The harsh tone, the familiar accusations. It’s easy, right? Except the voice you can spot was never the dangerous one. Today we look at the disguised version, the one that presents itself as discernment, prudence, high standards, strategic thinking. The one that doesn’t attack your decisions, but rather it makes them for you, and it makes them sound sensible.
If you’re finding this, this series useful, please do take a moment to follow or subscribe. wherever you’re listening. Each episode builds on the previous one, and subscribing, it’s the simplest way to keep the thread going. Here is how that disguise works. So you’re offered an opportunity, something visible, maybe a talk, a pitch, a bigger role, or a piece of work with your name attached to it. And almost immediately, a very reasonable voice Is this really the right time? You’ve got a lot on. It might be smarter to wait until you’re better prepared. You only get one first impression, after all.
Notice the tone. Nothing about it is harsh. There’s no, you’re not good enough. This voice is calm, it is measured, and it is strategic. Sounds like your best thinking. It sounds, quite frankly, like all the sort of advice that you would pay good money for. And so you turn the opportunity down, and that feels like a decision. It’s mature, it’s considered, it’s sensible.
But if you play back what actually happened, The recommendation was always going to be the same. Whatever the opportunity, whatever the timing, this voice was going to find a very reasonable-sounding route to the same destination. Don’t be seen. Don’t risk being judged. Stay where your approval is already secure. This time, the critic didn’t shout so much as quietly consult and you took the advice. Let me illustrate this by telling you about a consultant who I’ll call David. David was invited to speak at an industry event.
It was a good audience, exactly David’s subject, the kind of visibility that his business could really use. He turned it down. And listen to the reasons, because they are good ones. They’re good reasons. Strategically, it’s not the right moment. My positioning isn’t quite settled. It’s better to wait until the new offer is ready, and then the talk will do far more work for me. This is discipline.
This is playing the long game. Sounds sensible, right? Sounds like good reasons. 6 months later, 6 months down the line, David’s new offer is ready and another invitation to talk comes along. And again, he declines it. And again, the reasons are really good. The timing is wrong. It’s not the right audience mix. A clash with a client project that could probably have been moved.
It’s only when the third invitation gets the same treatment That David actually sits back and looks at the patterns rather than the reasons. 3 opportunities, 3 refusals, 3 completely different and yet entirely sensible sets of explanations, all of them coming to the same outcome. That outcome being David remaining unseen. That’s when it hits. The decisions were never strategic at all. They were made by the fear of being judged, and they were then dressed in strategic language. The critic had been running his diary for years wearing a consultant suit of its own. So let me put this question to you.
Is there a decision that you have been explaining to yourself as timing or prudence or strategy that has the curious property of always producing the same answer? Think of the thing you keep almost doing, the one that’s been not quite the right moment for a suspiciously long time. The key thing this episode turns on is the difference between discernment and disguised criticism. And I want to give you a reliable way to tell them apart because they can look identical when you’re looking from the inside.
Real discernment, that evaluates the work or the opportunity, but it leaves you intact. It is specific. It weighs the situations on its merits. It can imagine saying yes, and sometimes it does say yes. When discernment says no, the no comes with a real explanation attached, and when the condition that explanation requires is met, then the answer changes.
Disguised criticism, however, evaluates you through the work, and its conclusion never changes. It can always find a reason. The reasons are interchangeable because the reasons were never the point. The disguised criticism’s advice, however varied the wording, always carries the same subtext: do not risk their disapproval. You can put this another way. And you can say it’s the difference between a standard that serves the work and a standard that manages the audience.
A standard that serves the work asks whether the thing is good enough for its purpose, whereas a standard that manages an audience asks whether you’ll be safe from judgment. And no piece of work is ever good enough for that because that was never a question about the work.
Here’s the practical test, the key thing to take from today. When the sensible voice says wait, simply ask it, what specifically would make this a yes? And then see what answer comes back. Discernment will answer that question easily. The disguise That gets all vague and coy, beats around the bush and hides away from the answer.
So why is this version of the critic so much more effective than the harsh version? Well, it’s because the harsh version of the critic, that triggers your defenses. When something in your head says you’re not capable, some part of you can argue back or At least it flinches. The attack is visible so you can resist it. On the other hand, the wise-sounding critic slips past all of that because it flatters the very thing that overachievers are proudest of, namely your judgment.
Rather than telling you you’re inadequate, which you would contest, you’d dispute, It tells you that you’re being smart, and that’s something that you’d rather like to believe. It works with your intelligence instead of fighting it, and so your considerable analytical firepower ends up working for the pattern rather than for you. And there is a real cost to all of this. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. It means some of the decisions that you’ve been most confident about, they may need a second look. And that is uncomfortable, particularly for those who pride themselves on their ability to think clearly. But that’s okay. Finding this uncomfortable is absolutely fine.
Remember what we established in the previous episode. This voice, in both, in both of its forms, it’s running a protection strategy. It wants to see you approved of, or at the very least, wants to see you remain unjudged. The disguise exists because somewhere along that line, the direct approach stopped working on you. And so it adopts a disguise. You know, in a weird way, the sophistication of your inner critic is a measure of how capable you have become. It had to get smarter because you got smarter. Okay.
This week, I’d like to offer a small shift in how you listen to your own reasoning. When you spot yourself turning something down or delaying something that matters, don’t argue with the reasons. The reasons, they will always win. They’re very good. That’s what they do. They will win. Instead, look at the pattern of the outcomes. Ask yourself, where does this advice keep sending me each time? And if that answer is, it sends me away from being seen, well, that’s useful information.
You’ve learned something, something that no individual reason could ever tell you. And then use the test. What specifically would make this into a yes? It’s worth writing the answer down if there is one. If the condition is real, you now have a plan. If the no is based on real data, real consideration, you’ve got a plan on how to turn that into a yes. You know what you need to do so that you can take up the opportunity.
However, Or if when you ask what would make this a yes, if things get all vague, there’s no definitive answer, well, you’ve caught that critical voice in its disguise. And once you’ve seen it, it can’t really hide so well.
Now, none of this means that you have to override every hesitation. Absolutely not. Some caution is always useful, and some level of caution – that’s your judgment doing its job properly. The aim is not to overturn every hesitation. The aim is simply to help you better understand which advisor is speaking before you take the advice. In the next episode, We go to the place where this whole pattern has been protecting you from. Because when the performance fails, when you do get it wrong in front of an audience, something triggers that’s much, much heavier than disappointment. And that is the shame spiral.
So we’re going to take a look at what it is, and we’re going to look at why capable people get caught in it. Sometimes for weeks. And we’re going to look at what can loosen that shame spiral. That’s coming up in the next episode. We’ll see you in the next episode, same time, same place next week. But until then, here’s a question for you to consider.
Out of all the sensible reasons that you’ve given yourself lately, Which one would you struggle to defend if somebody asked what specifically would turn that no into a yes? Have fun with that one. If today’s episode has you rethinking a few of your own decisions, you might find it useful to know which kind of overachiever you are, because the disguise that this pattern wears differs between the different overachiever archetypes.
There is a short quiz at keithbn.link/Quiz That only takes a couple of minutes and it helps you figure out exactly who you are. And if this episode has hit, a rating or a review on your preferred platform helps a lot more than you’d think to get the show in front of others. And I would personally really appreciate it. Share this episode with a friend whose big move, whose big change, whose big decision has always been 6 months away for years. And if you haven’t already, do follow or subscribe. There’s always more episodes coming. There’s always more for us to learn.
Head over to keithbn.link/TOP. You’ll find all of the episodes. Find this one. You’ll get the show notes there along with some additional resources that are worth exploring. Thanks. I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, the Overachievers Coach, and I will be your guide as we explore a healthier way to succeed.
