What could be worse than someone constantly criticizing you?

What's worse is when that someone is you.

Yes, I'm talking about that voice in your head, sometimes whispering and sometimes screaming as it recites a litany of how much you do wrong and how little you do right.

Stifling that voice isn't easy. Or so I learned when I came across Kathy Caprino's recent article in Forbes, "How to Quell and Transform the Chatter and Negativity of Your Inner Voice."

My inner voice told me not to read the article, but I'm glad I did, since it introduced me to the work of Dr. Ethan Kross, a professor at the University of Michigan. Dr. Kross is the author of "Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It."

While Kross feels positive about the inspiring inner voice that tells us how wonderful we are, he is militant when it comes to stamping out that nasty, negative inner voice that tells us how wonderful we aren't.

To beat back what he calls "chatter," Kross has identified over two dozen "science-based tools" to "help people manage their inner critic and transform it into a strength." Here are a few to get the stopping started.

No. 1: Distanced Self-Talk

Imagine you are calling yourself up to give you advice. Use your own name as both the adviser and the advisee. A conversation would go "Hello, You. This is Me." Me would then go on to tell You that You shouldn't listen to Me, because You understand that what Me is saying is not helpful to You, and Me should know.

In other words, when You call You, hang up.

No. 2: Mental Time Travel

This requires "thinking about how you're going to feel about the source of (your) chatter in the future — a week, a month, a year from now." If you suspect that the bad advice you're giving yourself today will prove to create a disaster tomorrow, you have a good reason not to listen to yourself. Or to get your bad advice from someone else. The world of work is full of people who will guide you to making bigger and better blunders. They're called managers.

No. 3: Perform a Ritual

One way to wrest control from negative thoughts is to perform a ritual — "a fixed, rigid sequence of behaviors that are infused with meaning."

Be careful when choosing your ritual. You could go old school — pop on a wizard's cap and cook up a recipe of eye of newt, toe of frog, lizard's leg and owlet's wing in an Instant Pot in the break room at high noon, but then everyone will think you're trying to get a job in HR.

No. 4: Chatter Advisers

Assemble a group of friends to whom you can turn to help you "zoom out and focus on the bigger picture." Choose people whose problems are worse than yours. They won't be easy to find, but if sufficiently desperate, they will actually listen to your bad advice, and you won't have to.

No. 5: Challenge Mindset

If you start believing yourself about all the mistakes you're making at work, "remind yourself how you succeeded in similar situations in the past." Like in third grade, when you drew that picture of a bunny and your teacher put in on the bulletin board. Why not draw another bunny picture now and give it to your manager? When they see what you've been spending your time on, they'll either fire you on the spot or send you off for some R&R at a talcum-powder beach. Either way, you win.

No. 6: Go Green

Silence your inner critic by getting out in nature, which is "filled with awe-inspiring sights."

Really? Getting out in nature requires that you face the existential threat of gnats and ticks and grizzlies. Besides, you don't have to leave your office to experience "awe-inspiring sights."

Look left! There's the marketing VP who has done absolutely no work for five years and no one seems to have noticed. Look right! There's the SVP of sales, whose greatest skill is finding other people to blame for their screw-ups.

You can be sure these people don't listen to their inner voices, or else they'd hand in their resignations immediately. As for your inner voice, maybe you don't have to do anything at all. Think about all the brilliant things you say at work every day. No one ever listens to you.

Why should you?

Bob Goldman was an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@bgplanning.com. To find out more about Bob Goldman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: geralt at Pixabay