How I Learned to Silence My Inner Judge

For most of my life, I have carried an invisible companion: a harsh inner voice that sounds like mine and tells me, over and over, that I am not enough. It’s so oppressive that people close to me have often said they’d never met anyone so hard on themselves.

Over decades of listening to that voice, I let it convince me that no achievement was ever sufficient. Whatever I accomplished, my aim had to be higher—something more, something better. Moments of satisfaction, even pride, would simply have to wait.

Only recently did I come to understand that my toxic inner critic was not my voice at all.

It was my Judge.

That’s the term Shirzad Chamine uses in his extraordinary book, Positive Intelligence : Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Ach