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Our inner voice, our biggest stumbling block

While the “inner voice” helps us make decisions, another voice lives in our heads, one that’s evaluating our performance. It determines our value. It judges the level of optimism that is reasonable to hold regarding our future. But I believe it holds many people back.

According to Psychology Today, The critical inner voice is a point of view we internalise early in life based on childhood experiences. It can represent the way we were seen by an influential parental figure, particularly in times of stress when that person was at their worst and was mis-attuned to us in some way. As we grow up, we take on these negative views as our own and the inner voice starts to function like a disciplinary parent holding us back and keeping us in our place. By the time we reach adulthood, we perceive the negative views of us and the critical inner voice as part of our self-perception.

Often the inner voice and past insecurities hold us back in life, not a lack of intellect, knowledge or skills. And it takes a certain amount of drive, determination and perseverance to reach beyond your circumstances and rid yourself of a critical inner voice.

My advice is:

Identify the voice in your head
Start listening for the voice. The next time you succeed or when you fail, ask yourself, “what does the voice inside me like right now?” When you’re nervous or hesitant to try something new, there’s an inner narrative happening. What is it saying? If we’re going to be able to forgive ourselves and understand why we do what we do, this is key.

Establish whether the voice is helping you or holding you back
I believe the voice inside most of us is holding us back.

Avoid shame
I believe it is one of the biggest barriers to forgiving ourselves. But was is shame? According to Dr Brene Brown, “shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” When we believe we are unworthy of anything, we make dangerous choices. If we believe we are flawed and, therefore, unworthy, we will struggle to accept forgiveness for our own mistakes, and as entrepreneurs, we make and always will make mistakes.

Life should be a journey of continual improvement, discovery, and growth towards a more complete individual. Lack of growth in life and career is so often self-induced sabotage – that inner voice or thought pattern.

The only person who can change it is you.

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The role of a mentor

Ask any successful business person, and they will all admit to having benefited from the advice of a mentor at some point. Many people have achieved great things because someone else believed in them and help them along the way.

Any entrepreneur can benefit from having mentor. The knowledge, advice, and resources a mentor shares depend on the format and goals of the mentoring relationship.

A mentor may share with a mentee information about their own career path, as well as provide guidance, motivation, emotional support, and role modelling. A mentor may help with exploring careers, setting goals, developing contacts, and identifying resources. And as time goes on, the mentor’s role may change with the needs of the mentee.

Some mentoring relationships are part of structured programs with specific expectations and guidelines: others are more informal. But formal or informal, the concept of mentoring is simple, but successful implementation can be challenging. The key characteristics of an effective mentoring relationship in my mind, include the ability and willingness to:

  • value the mentee as a person
  • develop mutual trust and respect
  • maintain confidentiality
  • listen both to what is being said and how it is being said
  • help the mentee solve his or her own problem, rather than give direction
  • focus on the mentee’s development and resist the urge to produce a clone

The first step in finding a good mentor is coming to terms with the knowledge that you can benefit from having one. Understandably there’s a lot of ego, nervous energy and pride involved, but speaking from experience going it alone is admirable but foolhardy and highly flawed approach to taking on the world.

Steve Jobs’ had former Intel manager Mike Markkula. At Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin brought in Eric Schmidt (formerly of Sun Microsystems and Novell) who was appointed CEO when they realised the company’s explosive growth was exceeding their ability to manage it.

So, no matter how incredibly brilliant you think you are, every start-up needs at least one good mentor. Someone, somewhere, has already been through what you’re about to embark on.