How to Stop Overthinking & Quiet Your Inner Critic

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]for, you know, the kind of type A folks that are push, push, push, I think there's a lot of evidence that developing this mindset of self-compassion, not beating you avoiding the self-criticism can be really powerful. And that's a mindset where you kind of non-judgmentally notice what's going on. I'm having a tough time right now. This is tough right now. I'm feeling overwhelmed and that's okay, common human experience.

[00:00:19]Those kinds of mindset shifts really do seem to help, the research shows, for making us feel better.

[00:00:24]>> How much can that positive self-talk actually shift our mindset to make us happier. I know when I started doing loving kindness meditation, it is transformative for me.

[00:00:35]>> Yeah.

[00:00:36]>> Cuz I'm a very hard self-talker. And I think that manifests in ways that are are are not not great. I kind of recognized it and I was like, "Oof, I need a strategy here."

[00:00:47]And and I started experimenting with loving kindness meditation and it was a really good tool for me. So, I suppose there other tools like that that you feel can be really helpful for folks who struggle with that growth-oriented kind of the future's positive mindset and get get caught in these kind of negative self loops.

[00:01:05]>> I think loving kindness is a huge one, right? And anything that you can do to build up compassion for yourself or others is a great practice. Cuz even if you're building up compassion for other people, you kind of apply it to yourself, which is one of the hardest people to give compassion to. I think another mindset that really helps with our self-talk is gratitude. You know, we were talking before about the biases that mess us up and a big one is our negativity bias. Our, you know, evolved brains are constantly on the lookout for threats and that means we find the terrible thing. You know, a million things could go right in the day, you go home and your partner's like, "How was your day?" You're like, "Oh, this one thing or that one coworker that was, you know, annoying me." You can shift your mindset to the more positive stuff through a practice of gratitude, which is literally writing down and noticing, "These were the blessings. Here was the stuff that went right today." And, you know, just like a loving kindness meditation, it's a practice. It's hard at first, you get used to it over time, but, you know, like all good things, you've got to keep doing it daily to kind of get the benefit from it. A final one I think is like and and it's related to sort of self-compassion, is sort of fighting back against perfectionist talk.

[00:02:06]>> Ooh.

[00:02:06]>> Um there's lots of studies showing just how much perfectionism have has gone up in the last two decades.

[00:02:11]>> that look like, perfectionist talk? Like how would you >> Uh >> How would you >> I should have done better. There's a lot of shoulds. I joke with my students that it's like on yourself cuz you're like, "Oh, I should have done better. I should have looked at that thing. I should have, you know, made my students, you know, like >> Oh, should should should should should.

[00:02:26]Also very black and white, right? It's like it's not kind of talk.

[00:02:30]>> like that kind of language, yeah.

[00:02:32]>> Has features of what psychologists often call fortune telling, where it's like, "Oh, I'm never going to get into grad school." Or, you know, like that that quarterly report is going to go terrible. Like you're predicting the future.

[00:02:43]>> Right.

[00:02:43]>> Um you're often doing a lot of mind reading, like how my husband's going to kill me, like, you know, my coworker like hates me, like >> Right.

[00:02:49]>> you're mind reading in ways that don't look good. So it has all these features, but the the key to break it is just to notice that you're doing it.

[00:02:56]>> Yeah.

[00:02:56]>> kind of catch yourself in the act. And and one of my favorite strategies for fighting back to it is to give it a name. My students, cuz they're all into memes, they like calling it Karen. Like, "Okay, Karen, like I hear you yelling at me again. Just shut up." Apologies to any Karens.

[00:03:09]>> I don't know what Karen >> so bad. But, you know, pick your pick your own, you know, like a mean coach or somebody you don't like. Like the power of that is that you recognize that it's a thought. And you realize like, "Oh, this isn't reality. This is just that broken voice in my brain." That I had a a podcast guest who studies perfectionism, Jordana Confino, and she said she likes to picture that little guy from the Mucinex commercials.

[00:03:30][laughter] >> I'm going to cut it out if you can't use it.

[00:03:32]>> The little green goblin like like a snot like >> yelling at you. And so, picture whatever it is that, you know, you like and you can use, but really what you're trying to do is to label that voice as a voice.

[00:03:43]That's not truth. It's not reality. It's just, you know, your broken brain telling you stuff.

[00:03:48]>> It kind of loses its power, I suppose, when you do that.

[00:03:50]>> Totally. Another another technique that I love is listen to the the things that you're saying and put it to like some dumb musical soundtrack. Like pretend it's the Star Wars theme and it's you're saying I shouldn't have done this thing but it's like you can even picture it kind of if you're a visual person picture it kind of going up like the What you're trying to do is to like take the weight out of it just being Another colleague talks about picturing it in Comic Sans font. Like pick your like least favorite font and like imagine it in that and you're like okay it's dumb. It's just silly things I'm saying to myself.

[00:04:20]>> That's so good. Those are some really good strategies. Thank you. A lot of folks struggle with that.

[00:04:26]>> Oh yeah. And I think it's also helpful to normalize it, right? Like if you're listening to this podcast right now, you're already the kind of person who likes to push yourself and you like most people on the planet are going to get it wrong because we tend to just have this theory that the way you push yourself is to scream at yourself in that in your head like a drill instructor. But you know, studies look at does that work and they find no, super doesn't work. Makes you feel bad and we know our performance is tied to our emotions. When you're experiencing more positive emotions you perform better. So just making yourself feel like crap is hurting your performance. But more it tends to increase things like procrastination, right? Cuz procrastination's really about kind of a fear of doing the things wrong and you're kind of afraid of that bad voice in your head, too.