Rebuilding Self-Worth by Banishing the Inner Critic and Taking up New Skills

Mark Sanford, Ph.D.
3 min readJun 29, 2022

Skill-building to overcome limits and build up your resolve

Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash

When I resolved to change and become something other than an ex-academic who didn’t thrive in academia, I had to find another job. (This was twenty years ago when college teaching for me became an embarrassment: I suffered from too much performance anxiety and worries about my competence. I had to give it up.)

I tried many temporary sales, consulting, and coaching jobs, but none took off. I had to rebuild my self-worth in ways that did not involve performing before others. And I had to do the rebuild that did not include comparing myself with others.

Avoid Comparison with Others

Not comparing yourself to others, it turns out, according to the experts, is the first step in building self-worth; you need to stop thinking about how your behavior appears to others. In other words, you need to challenge your critical inner voice

As an aside, I am recalling David Reisman and his book the Lonely Crowd, who argued that Americans were too other-directed; they were, in his analysis, too concerned with how others perceived them.

Undoubtedly, you are acquainted with the inner dialogue that often accompanies your efforts to…

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Mark Sanford, Ph.D.
Mark Sanford, Ph.D.

Written by Mark Sanford, Ph.D.

Ph.D. sociology. I help those working on personal development to attain self-respect and self-affirmation.https://medium.com/@sanfmark/membership

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