Now that we’re into December, most of us are racing to wrap up the year at work.

And this is the time of year when most companies ask us to start capturing our accomplishments as part of the annual performance review most companies follow. 

It usually begins – at least in the U.S. – with entering your accomplishments into the system to see how you tracked against the goals you set earlier in the year. This then becomes the basis for a performance discussion, usually in the very early part of the following year. 

So, this was the topic of one of my sessions with a newer private coaching client earlier this week. 

My client was promoted into an executive role this past Spring and since then, in her words, she’s struggled a bit. In fact, that’s why she came to me in the first place. 

In the early days of her new role, she felt like she had stumbled – both in her relationships with some of her new colleagues and on one of her first big assignments. So, she wasn’t happy, and she’d spent a lot of time beating herself up. And when she got tired of that, she reached out and we started a coaching series aimed at quieting her Inner Critic.

And while she feels she’s recovered a bit and worked her way into some recent wins, this end of the year accomplishment exercise brought up all the memories of her earlier struggles. All she could think about was her struggles and stumbles and that, in her mind, she wasn’t performing as perfectly as she would’ve liked. And she was worried about what the new boss was going to say.

Now this is one of my clients who’s a super high achiever but who also has a super active inner critic. And so, as she recollected all the earlier struggles, her Inner Critic kicked into high gear, telling her things like “you’re not up to the task” and “you’re going to fail” and her general feelings of “not being good enough.”

For her, this thought pattern is deeply entrenched. 

And at earlier stages of her career, she found that her Inner Critic kind of spurred her on. It generated feelings of anxiety and self-doubt, but she found it easier to push past those and keep going when she had a more junior or less visible role. 

Now that she’s an executive, that same inner critic is still there, alive, and well. But NOW, the feelings of anxiety and self-doubt it produces are much more disruptive.

She’s not sleeping.

She’s over thinking and obsessing.

She’s isolating from friends.

She’s procrastinating on important initiatives.

All so she can stew about those earlier-in-the-year mistakes which she is making mean that she’s already been exposed as the fraud her Inner Critic keeps telling her that she is. And since she’s now an executive, she fears everyone is about to learn “the truth” about her…that she’s a fraud. 

So, the work we’ll be doing over the next several weeks is working on how to turn down the volume on the Inner Critic and turn up the Inner Coach. 

And I thought this would be relevant to so many of you because our “Inner Critic” series – episodes 6 – 9 are some of the most popular of the podcast. So, if you’re interested in better understanding your Inner Critic, you might want to go back and give those a listen. 

But in this episode, we’re going a bit deeper and I’m going to share some exercises you can do to build up your Inner Coach. And to learn how to shift from the Critical Talk Track to the Coach Talk Track in real time. 

For more, give the episode a liste

Do you have a question you'd like to have addressed on the podcast? Want to give us some feedback or suggestions? Click here to send us a text.

Follow us on Instagram @thepurposefulcareer.
Learn more about Next Level, our monthly membership at https://www.thepurposefulcareer.com/nextlevel.