Harvard Business Review: Make Peace with Your Inner Critic
"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery
Harvard Business Review: Make Peace with Your Inner Critic
Discussion between Sarah Green Carmichael and Tara Sophia Morh
14 January 2016
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael. Today I’m talking with Tara Moore, author of Playing Big. Tara, thank you so much for talking with us today.
TARA MOORE: Thanks for having me.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So you argue in the book that too many of us are playing small when we actually have the capacity to do bigger things. Is it just fear that holds us back? What’s the thing that’s really is getting in our way?
TARA MOORE: Absolutely at the core is fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of doing something so innovative that maybe it’s controversial or makes you feel alone in what you’re doing. All of those are really big fears. But another huge block for people is simply self-doubt. Having that inner critic voice, and not having any tools to manage it.
SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So before we get too far down the rabbit hole of the inner critic, I do want to just pause here and ask you something you wrote in the book about dealing with praise. In the book you mentioned that you have to unhook from both criticism and from praise. So why is it so important to re-evaluate your relationship with praise as well as how you feel about criticism?
TARA MOORE: Well, certainly none of this is a have to. But it is a question of is my relationship to praise really serving my biggest goals? And what I find is that for many people, they come to a juncture in their careers where to move forward they need to evolve their relationship to praise. And what I mean by that in practical terms is particularly if you’ve been a high achiever. And that could start early in your life or early in school.
Read the whole discussion (or listen to the recording) on Harvard Business Review.
Smuin Contemporary Ballet / Photo by Chris Hardy
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