Inner Gremlin aka Critical Voice

When you want to do something that is new or really challenging and you come face to face with your inner gremlin, it can become pretty scary. The inner gremlin can slow you down or even stop you cold.

The inner gremlin whispers strong words of doubt and can convince you that it’s right, that maybe you should rethink this whole thing… and maybe just forget about even trying. The inner gremlin knows ALL the buttons to push to make you feel unsure of yourself.  The inner gremlin knows All the scary stories you tell yourself.

So what’s up with this inner gremlin?

Where did it come from?

Why is it always trying to make things so hard for you and messing with your life?

What can you do about it?

First of all, the inner gremlin is a part of your own mind. It is a way of thinking that goes way back to our old days of living in caves and doing our best to not get eaten by wild animals. It was a very dangerous time in our human history. It wasn’t easy to survive. In those early days that was our main job–to survive and create the next generation of human people.

The inner gremlin part of our mind developed to always be on the lookout for dangers that would end our lives. Survival was the number one priority.

Let’s look at an example: We’re all sitting around in the cave one night and a couple of our friends say, “Hey, it’s a nice night, let’s go out and take a walk and look at the stars.” A few agree it sounds like a cool idea, and take off. You and a couple of others remember that last week some friends went out of the cave at night to walk and look at the beautiful stars…and never came back. (None of their brave, but reckless genes made it into the next generation).

Your inner gremlin whispers to you, “That isn’t a good idea, what if you get killed? What if you don’t come back? What if you get eaten? What if the guys from across the river that don’t like us come and catch you, what if you can’t outrun them, they’re pretty fast??”

So, you can see the inner gremlin was our friend at one time, it was there to protect us from taking dangerous risks that might end our lives. It grew along with us over the years, as we humans continued to live in dangerous times. The gremlin grew into the general “negativity bias,” critical voice that we live with today.

Negativity bias is a feeling that anything that is new, different, difficult, or in front of an audience, is too risky and dangerous to do. It’s kind of baked into our DNA now. You can recognize it when you hear questions that start with, “What if”.

The gremlins no longer have the need to protect us from roaming wild animals, but we sometimes feel that learning or trying new and challenging activities are risky. What if we fail? What if we embarrass ourselves? What if people laugh at us, or don’t like us? Our inner gremlin interprets that as life threatening and jumps to the job it was born to do, scare you out of taking that dangerous step.

The last question is what can we do about it?

The honest answer is, we can’t get rid of it, but we can trick it into working with us instead of against us by making friends with it.

Just being aware of how the gremlin operates and why, can make us feel a little better. We know what it’s up to, it’s only trying to keep us safe and alive.

Here is an exercise you can use to help tame your inner gremlin and get it to be a friend that’s a little less scary.

1. Sit comfortably with your eyes closed, relax the muscles around your eyes, relax your jaw, and relax your shoulders.
2. Feel the sensation of your body sitting, feel the pressure on your butt from the chair or floor.
3. Notice that you are breathing and notice how it feels as your breath goes in and out. Pay attention to that feeling for a few breaths, in and out.
4. Now notice if you can, the sensation that arises when you hear the inner gremlin’s scary story. Imagine what color it is, how big it is. What shape it is. Where you feel it in your body. Just get used to feeling it and seeing that it is just a sensation, like the pressure of the seat on your butt and back, or the sounds that you hear with your ears, or the temperature in the room on your skin.
5. Now focus back on your breath. Count 10 slow breaths in and out. Relaxing into each one.
6. Now tell your inner gremlin that you appreciate it’s thoughtfulness in trying to keep you safe and alive, and that it really is such a great friend, but this time you don’t need it’s help. You’ve got this!

Practice this regularly, not just when you’re getting ready to go out on the ice, or up to bat, or to give a presentation in front of an audience. When you practice regularly you will create a new mindset that will keep a leash on your inner gremlin.

With this mindset, you can ask your friendly gremlin, “Hey gremlin, what do you think?” and then YOU decide whether you want to listen or do your own thing and go for it!!