Boost your self-esteem with these 5 simple steps

Your inner critic tends to crush your self-confidence, blocks creativity and traps you in deadening relationships and careers.

Everyone has an inner critic in them but understanding and handling it is what matters. When out of control, your inner critic tends to crush your self-confidence, blocks creativity and traps you in deadening relationships and careers.

Lucia Capacchione of YourTango lists a few tips on how to silence your inner critic:

Get out some paper, a pen or set of colored markers. If you keep a journal, use it for this process.

With your dominant hand, write down, in the second person, all the critical things you say to yourself. These are the put downs and judgments you make about yourself, your body, or any aspect of yourself (i.e you're so stupid, you're so fat, you'll never go anywhere in life).

Next, read the put downs back to yourself. Let yourself feel the reaction in your gut that comes up when your inner bully puts you down.

Put the pen in your non-dominant hand (the one you don't normally write with) and answer your inner critic back. Tell it off in no uncertain terms. Don't concern yourself with spelling, grammar or penmanship. Just let the words fly onto the page. It may feel awkward and slow (even foolish), but hang in there — keep writing!

After you feel finished, read aloud the "answer back" you wrote with your non-dominant hand.