The Judge Within

16 March 2021

My sister, Roza is only a year older than I, a very accomplished doctor with 4 kids and a string of great work to her name. She is the closest family member to me although we are like night and day in terms of character. While I want to conquer the world, she wants to feed them. My motto is success and hers is love. I accused her of having way too much compassion and in return, she diagnosed me with a critical illness called the Inner Voice! 

Good evening my Fellow Toastmasters and guests. 

My name is Lini and I have Critical Inner Voice.  Or as a lawyer, I have relabelled it, The Judge Within! It is a disease far worse than COVID19 because it is in each and everyone of us. It is a global pandemic that no one talks about except for my sister, and now me!! Just like COVID19, the symptoms may manifest severely in some more than others. 

According to my sister, my worst symptom is known as “Perfectionism”. This has its own good quality but because of it, almost always, I will only pursue activities that I am confident to achieve high success rate. My sister felt that this is limiting my ability to learn from making mistakes which are guideposts in our growth! As a caring sister, she wanted to make sure that my inner voice is fuelling my success and as a good doctor, she decided to go on a mission to find out when this harsh symptom developed and help eradicate this pandemic that is weighing me down.  

We started by tracking down our lives from the day I was born. I spent my first 5 years with my grandparents because when I was born, my mom already had my brother who was 3, and my sister to take care of.   As my grandparents doted on me, by the time I returned to my parents’ house, I was able to do a lot of things including playing chess. I continued playing with my grandfather on weekends until I was 11 years old, when I finally beat him to his own game. 

Since chess is a tactical game that has many many strategies, patterns and concepts that one must know and remember in order to be a good player, my sister felt that this could be the birth of my internalised standard that form the basis for the Judge Within. In order to break free from this “judicial tyranny”, I need to transform the rigidity of its authority. 

At the turn of 2021, I started to welcome uncertainty into my life although it comes with a lot of over-thinking prior to each warm embrace.

Last month, I did a podcast interview for DTM Nurhayati which I would not have agreed upon had I not been on this journey of transformation! When Nurhayati sent me the recording, the Judge Within would have ruminated on it – play, pause, analyse and repeat till hell freezes over. 

I decided to take control. So I listened to it, just once, made a long note of the things to improve and moved on! I have also learnt that the saying “to err is human” is not a cop out for when someone makes a mistake. The word mistake derives its meaning only by comparison to what we desire, what we see as success. Noticing and admitting our mistakes helps us get in touch with our commitments - what we really want to be, do and have.

At the end of the podcast session, Nurhayati wishes that I find my own voice within  Toastmasters. Ameen to that as I definitely would need another voice, louder preferably, to drown my current Inner Voice and hopefully with enough credibility, it will send the Judge Within packing and revoking its own authority. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, don’t let yourself be your own worst enemy and harshest critic. If you want to break your glass ceiling, you need to silent the Judge Within.  

Thank you.