“For f***’s sake, Jana, why can’t you just….?”
“F***ing hell, Jana, what did you do that for?”
“You’ve done f*** all all day!”

Please meet my inner critic! It followed me like a shadow, it always had an opinion, and it used to swear - a lot. I write about it in the past tense, because my inner critic is on vacation. It’s not coming back, at least, that’s the plan. Life is so much more pleasant without it. 

This article is about inner critics and how to get rid of them (Yes, it is possible, read on).

I suspect you know very well what I am talking about. We all have inner critics, eager to sabotage our lives at any possible opportunity. They have very little faith in our abilities, they love to point fingers, overdramatise and invent doomsday scenarios. In fact, they are some of the most creative, vocal and opinionated creatures out there. What are they?

In her brilliant book Sane New World, Ruby Wax explains that an inner critic is an incarnation of our "lizard brain” -  the brain stem, cerebellum and basal ganglia both lizards and humans have inherited from fish. These parts of the brain handle basic body functions such as breathing, balance and coordination, as well as simple survival urges like feeding, mating and self-defence. The basic function of the “lizard brain” is self-preservation. As such, it cannot appreciate risk-taking, creativity or complex emotions like compassion. It will worry about everything beyond the realm of lizard’s life. Fortunately, our brains have evolved beyond the capabilities of reptiles, but the new complex machine that is our brain has this annoying flaw - lizard’s voice, inner critic, the gremlin, whatever you choose to call it.

You must agree that your life would improve considerably without unhelpful sabotage, if only we could put the wretched creature into a soundproof box and lock it there forever. 

The creative method

Author John-Paul Flintoff, writing for the Guardian, recommends drawing an inner critic and giving it a name, thereby becoming aware of your negative thinking patterns and externalising them. His inner critic is "small with a shaved head and dark shadows under his bulging eyes. He generally looks worried, and avoids eye contact, but sometimes he stares boldly, his face contorted into a disbelieving sneer.” Flintoff calls his inner critic Uriah, "because like the Dickens character, his inner critic is "ever so ‘umble”". Whenever Flintoff thinks "You’re not ready”, "Nobody wants that anyway”, "You’re too old”, "It’s not going to make any difference”, he knows it’s Uriah talking and filters away negative chatter. 

The taming method

Margeting guru and author Seth Godin and his many followers recommend talking to your inner critic like an indulgent nurse with a demented patient. If your gremlin is sneering at you after your pad thai came out clumpy and way too salty with “You can’t even follow a recipe, you can’t cook the simplest dish!”, you should politely respond with something cheerful like “Don’t you worry your pretty head about me, I’ll be all right…”. The idea is to demonstrate the inner critic that it cannot wind you up, so it might as well stop bothering. 

The neuroplastic method

Neuroscientists have proven that our brains are “plastic": they don’t stop developing in childhood, as was previously assumed, and instead the brains can be “rewired” by laying down new pathways and practising the new route until it becomes “automatic” and followed subconsciously. Cognitive behavioural therapists have successfully adapted this scientific breakthrough to help their patients take advantage of neuroplasticity and replace negative patterns with positive ones. 

When my pad thai did not turn out right, I said to myself: “Oh well, let’s try a different recipe next time and keep an eye on the quantities of fish sauce it instructs to add.” When I lost my breath after jogging for just 10 minutes after a long period of physical inactivity, I preempted my inner critic voicing its opinion by telling myself: “Wasn’t it amazing to be up and running again? You’ll build your fitness back in no time.” I say a lot of “well done” and “you are a rock star” to myself and have gradually noticed that my inner critic lost its voice. It still manages to sneak it a comment once in a while, but it’s nothing like the constant negative chatter it was capable of.

I find it helps when you address yourself as you would a child or your younger self. Think compassion: “It’s OK, you’ll do better next time”, think praise “That’s brilliant, keep up the good work”, think encouragement “I believe in you”. What’s beautiful about it is that not only does this method works (by rewiring your neural pathways) but suddenly you’ve acquired yourself an effective and free life coach whose diary is always at your disposal.

Bye-bye, inner critic, hello, brand new neuroplastic world!

I am great at interviews. I love meeting new people, and I know how to make a good first impression. When I apply for a new job, once I get to an interview stage, I know the job is in the bank, as long as I want it. I remember meeting the Chief Executive of the last company I worked at, and we got on famously at once.

Tom hates interviews. He’s been offered many different job opportunities over the years, but he prefers to stay put in his current role, because the idea of going for an interview gives him heebie-jeebies. Tom reckons he is terrible at interviews. He can recall every single disappointing episode perfectly. It is definitely an experience he’d rather avoid.

Here is the thing. Tom and I have had an equal share of good and bad interviews. I had a plenty of terrible experiences over the last 15 years. I remember talking to a woman at IBM, where I hoped to do an internship, and all I could think of was her greasy hair, making it impossible for the teenage me to concentrate on anything else. Then a few years back I interviewed at a publishing company based in the City. I suddenly could not speak, which has never happened to me before or since, but somehow the place felt so wrong, I ended up sabotaging myself subconsciously. Most recently, I had an interview with someone (in London) who questioned my abilities because I am "a woman and a Russian". This latest memory should put me off interviews for life but it’s not the case. It’s just that when I think “interviews”, I reach for a memory drawer with all the positive experiences I’ve had.

The opposite is true for Tom. Despite having succeeded in getting into a top university, being offered a prestigious internship and getting a top notch job, thanks to his credentials and communication skills, he never reaches for a happy memory drawer, when thinking about interviews. Subconsciously, he pulls out a dreadful memory, and it takes over his mind. 

It’s not just Tom. His girlfriend Sarah does not like flying. It’s not that she has a phobia, but for her it’s always an uncomfortable experience. The moment she is at the airport, she can think of nothing but disasters and would chat about the missing Malaysian plane all the way on board of Heathrow Express. Sarah’s sister frequently has to give presentations at work, but it is something she absolutely dreads. She thinks she just does not have the confidence, and there is no memory she can recall to boost herself because every single public speaking experience is a failure in her mind.

I suspect that we all have a closet we automatically refer to as disastrous. The thing is, it’s not about confidence or any other inherent qualities. It’s about our memory drawers and how we use them. 

If Tom takes over his propensity to recall negative interview experience and instead picks a memory of a successful interview, when he was at ease and performed brilliantly, he might think that interviews aren’t that terrible after all. If Sarah thinks of a peaceful flight journey she took and imagines herself sitting on an airplane admiring the beautiful clouds outside, anticipating a holiday on the Mediterranean, she’ll feel much more relaxed. Sarah’s sister can simply visualise herself effortlessly skiing down the black run at Courchevel (for she is a fantastic skier), and this memory will give her a confidence boost she can apply ahead of her next presentation. 

Be mindful which memory drawer you are reaching for. To put it differently, edit your memories to bring up positive experiences and let them guide you forward. Otherwise, you won’t see the wood for the trees.  

I caught up with a friend I have not seen for a couple of months. As we were having dinner, I observed that she has been completely transformed by her new job: previously timid in the office environment, she was unrecognisably confident, eloquent and assertive talking about her new role. Have you ever caught yourself thinking about a person behaving out of character? It may be a friend, you’ve always regarded as a strong person, showing her vulnerable side. It may be a colleague, wise and considerate, making a ruthless and an unfair decision. Perhaps it’s your child who surprised you in an unexpected way. 

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, a book analysing how little things can make a big difference, argues that there is no such thing as a unified and an all-encompassing character. Human behaviour depends very much on the context. 

In his book Gladwell describes the following experiment:

A group of people were told to watch two sets of similarly talented basketball players, the first of whom were shooting baskets in a well-lit gym whilst the second set of players were practising in a badly lit gym (and therefore missing a lot of shots). The observers were then asked to judge how good the players were. Overwhelmingly, they regarded the players in a well-lit gym to be better.

Gladwell points out that humans are naturally a lot more attuned to personal cues than contextual cues. We seek out people’s essential attributes: lazy, gregarious, honest, ambitious, unreliable. To do otherwise and constantly qualify every person in every new context would be very difficult or indeed unfeasible. It is much easier to decide that we can trust a friend once and for all than to qualify his character at every opportunity. 

Perhaps a more extreme and a much more convincing example in this argument is an experiment, conducted by a group of social scientists, led by Philip Zimbardo, at Stanford University in 1970s. They put together a mock prison in university’s basement and invited local residents to volunteer in an experiment, designed to find out whether prisons are such dreadful places, because they are full of criminals or because their environment is turning people into nasty characters. Volunteers were tested and judged healthy on the basis of a number of psychological tests. They were divided into two groups: prisoners and guards. Shockingly, the guards, some of whom had previously identified themselves as pacifists, fell quickly into the role of hard-core disciplinarians. Prisoners, unprepared for cruel and sadistic behaviour, experienced depression, rage and acute anxiety. One prisoner got hysterical after just 36 hours. The experiment, originally intended for two weeks, was called off after six days.

“Zimbardo’s conclusion was that there are specific situations so powerful that they can overwhelm our inherent predispositions. He’s not denying that how we are raised by our parents affects who we are, or that the kind of schools we went to, the friends we have, or the neighbourhoods we live in affect our behaviour. <…> His point is simply that there are certain times and places and conditions when much of that can be swept away, that there are instances where you can take normal people from good schools and happy families and good neighbourhoods and powerfully affect their behaviour merely by changing the immediate details of their situation.” 

With this postulate in mind, workplace situations, family affairs and even world events appear in a different light. In a certain context, power corrupts, resolve weakens, whilst new career opportunities let people blossom. 

To quote Gladwell: “Character isn’t a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits. <…> Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context.”

What are you going to do, given the power of context? Give someone another chance? Reserve judgement? Do something outrageously extravagant  'out-of-character'? 

If you’ve ever heard of game theory, you must have come across Prisoner’s Dilemma. What is it actually about and how can we apply it to real life situations outside economics classrooms?

Game theory is an area of microeconomics which studies interactive behaviour, i.e. situations where players’  actions  are interdependent. Players could be firms, competing on the same market, politicians, hoping to attract the same voters or a husband and wife, playing on each other’s nerves. As such, game theory can be applied to any situation, involving strategic interaction, and it can help analyse and predict behaviour.

Prisoner’s Dilemma is a simple game with only two players, but it’s a brilliant tool to understand economic, political or social phenomena, where two parties fail to cooperate despite the fact that it would be in their best interest to do so. The original game considered a situation where two prisoners, partners in crime, were being questioned in separate rooms. Each prisoner (A and B in the figure below) had a choice of either confessing to a crime, and thereby implicating the other, or denying his participation. 

If only one prisoner confessed, then he would go free, and the police would charge the other prisoner and put him into prison for 5 years. If both prisoners denied being involved, then both would be given 6 months for a minor offence. If both prisoners confessed, they would be locked in for 1 year. 

The figure below is a payoff matrix for each prisoner. For simplicity, the payoffs are indicated with numbers: the best outcome is 0 years in prison and the worst is 5 years, represented as a negative number.  

This situation is a classic game because a decision of player A affects the outcome for player B. Imagine, you are player A. If player B denies the crime, then you are better off confessing, because then you’ll walk free. If player B confesses, it is once again better to confess and get a reduced sentence. Exactly the same strategy works for player B, which means that both players would be better off confessing, regardless of what the other player does.

Since both players choose to confess, they get a year each (-1, -1). You don’t need to be an economist to see that both players could do better, if they hang tight. They would both get 6 months (-1/2, -1/2), which is a better outcome in aggregate. It’s also a Pareto efficient outcome, meaning that you cannot make anyone better off, without making someone worse off. It would be better for the society (comprising two prisoners in the game) if they both chose "Deny, Deny" (speaking in economic, not ethical terms!). 

The problem is that the prisoners cannot coordinate their actions, and they probably don’t trust each other enough to sit tight. They both confess and get a year each.

How can we apply this game to real life? Ukrainian government and separatists fight in a civil war. Interpret “Confess” as “keep fighting” and “Deny” as “stop fighting”. Obviously, the society would be better off if both players stop fighting, but because it is tempting to crash the opposition when one player stops fighting, the war goes on when two sides cannot agree on the future of their country. 

In business, consider Virgin Media and BT setting the price for fibre broadband in the UK. They both would be better off keeping the retail price at £15 month - “Deny” in our example. But if one competitor keeps the price at £15, another would be better off undercutting its rival slightly by offering a deal, e.g. 6 months at £7.50, thereafter at £15, thereby attracting more customers and making more profit through the higher volume of sales. This is a “Confess” scenario, both Virgin Media and BT offer deals and end up shaving off their own profit margins. 

Finally, brothers Mads and Kristian agree to call their mother regularly. If they both do that, she’ll be best off. But if Kristian sticks to this agreement, Mads can skip calling his mother because she is already being cheered up by one son. Unfortunately, Kristian applies the same logic, and the poor woman does not hear from her sons for weeks, thinking them ungrateful brats. 

Can you think of other commonplace applications of Prisoner’s Dilemma, where two players end up making decisions which could be bettered, had they cooperated? Jot them down in comments below.