When Your Inner Critic Learns to Whisper

 

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

I was in a meeting back in March, sitting across the table from a client as we mapped out a pricing strategy they wanted to implement. It wasn’t complicated, just complex. There’s a difference. I love this kind of conversation. It’s one of my favorite things to work on with clients: How do we price things in a way that makes sense for both the business and the customer?

Ideas were firing. I was talking fast, moving from one thought to the next. Pattern-matching in real time, connecting dots as fast as they came. I do this a lot.

It’s how my brain works. When I’m quiet, it’s ideas bouncing around inside my head faster than I can put them on paper. Out loud, it’s chaotic and sometimes noisy.

Frenetic is a word that comes to mind.

Partway through that conversation, abruptly, something inside me shifted.

I was suddenly aware of my own voice. It wasn’t what I was saying, but the way I was saying it. The speed, volume, and drive to keep talking. And then, like an opening just wide enough to slip through, I realized something else: I was trying to prove that I really knew what I was talking about.

That’s when I stopped. Mid-sentence. I apologized for the verbal onslaught. I let the silence sit for a moment and took a deep breath. Then I asked a question instead of offering another answer.

That’s what it looked like on the outside.

But on the inside, it was something different: the whisper of my inner critic, dressed up like helpful urgency.

Most people think of the inner critic as loud, obvious, blunt, and generally cruel. You’re not enough. You’ll never get it right. And sometimes, it is.

But over time, that voice evolves. It gets clever. It finds new disguises. It no longer screams. It suggests. “You should probably say a little more so they don’t think you’re winging it.” “They might assume you haven’t done your homework if you pause too long.”

It offers these thoughts like advice. Like realism. Like good leadership.

But they’re not neutral. They’re fear masquerading as strategy.

When I was younger, my inner critic was easy to spot. It told me I wasn’t good enough. It told me I’d embarrass myself. It made me second-guess every decision before I made it. It was loud, relentless, and predictable.

These days, it’s subtler. It’s learned to speak in my own voice. It uses phrases like “just being cautious” or “managing expectations.” It often tells me to work a little harder or prove I belong at the table. And not because I’m incompetent, but just to be safe. Just to be sure.

And that’s the trouble. The critic has learned to whisper.

That meeting in March didn’t go badly. In fact, it ended up going really well. But that moment of realization stuck with me because I noticed the story under the surface.

It was the story that says: You better say everything you know before they think you don’t know enough.

It sounds like a useful motivator. But really, it’s self-doubt in different Fruit of the Loom.

The hard part is that not everything the inner critic says is wrong. Sometimes it borrows real truths — yes, you should come prepared. Yes, it is helpful to be clear. But it’s the urgency behind the voice that gives it away. The push to prove, not to connect. The need to be enough, rather than to listen.

And if I don’t notice that shift, I end up rushing through the conversation instead of being part of it. I end up presenting instead of partnering.

Silencing the critic isn’t something I’ve mastered. Most days, I still catch myself mid-sentence. Or mid-email. Or mid-apology I didn’t need to make. The voice is still there, still whispering, still convincing me that it’s not doubt — it’s just pragmatism.

But the more I notice it, the more I can choose a different response.

I can stop talking, ask a better question, and trust that I don’t have to fill every silences to prove my value.

Confidence doesn’t mean never hearing the voice. It means knowing what to do when it shows up.

That kind of confidence isn’t loud. It’s quiet and patient; willing to pause and listen. Willing to let the room breathe without rying to own it.

That meeting in March reminded me that I don’t need to say everything I know in one sitting. I don’t have to prove I belong. Sometimes the most valuable thing I bring to the table isn’t my knowledge. It’s my willingness to stop talking when the moment calls for something else.

And that is enough.

The Temptation to Numb

 

Photo by Andrey Matveev on Unsplash

I was sitting on the edge of my bed with my phone in my hand and my eyes half-open. I’d been running on fumes for weeks—three and a half to five hours of sleep a night, if I was lucky. I could hear my wife reading a bedtime story down the hall to our youngest. I was waiting, and not doing anything important. I was just playing some dumb, flick-and-collect game on my phone that one of my kids probably downloaded. I couldn’t describe the game to you now if you asked me.

It wasn’t fun or interesting or useful. It was just… nothing.

Which, at that moment, was exactly what I wanted.

I wasn’t distracting myself from the present as much as I was trying to dull the future. I knew what tomorrow held: too much to do and not enough time to do it. So I played the game. I desperately needed sleep but I knew sleep meant starting over again in a few short hours.

I was tired. More than that, though, I was tired of being tired. In that moment, seated on the bed, playing that game, I was disappearing into something small, quietly, and completely meaningless.

And that’s what numbing is.

We don’t always notice it when it’s happening. It never looks like anything dramatic. Sometimes it’s scrolling. Sometimes it’s snacking. Sometimes it’s throwing yourself into work that doesn’t really need to be done just so you can feel productive.

Sometimes it’s a puzzle game you don’t even like.

In that moment, I wasn’t resting. I wasn’t being still. I wasn’t recovering. I wasn’t even thinking. I was just floating somewhere between exhaustion and avoidance, not wanting to feel what I knew was waiting for me.

It would be impossible to count the number of times that scenario has repeated itself.

It won’t be the last.

There have been long seasons of my life where “being helpful” was how I numbed. Solving other people’s problems kept me from facing my own. It felt good. It made me feel valuable. But it also became a way to avoid stillness. To avoid reckoning with where I was and what I needed.

The temptation to numb doesn’t always show up in the things we label as “bad.” Sometimes, it hides inside our strengths. The things people admire in us. The ways we show up, go the extra mile, stay busy, stay strong.

But numbing isn’t the same as coping.

And avoidance isn’t the same as rest.

The hardest part about numbing is that it usually works just well enough to keep you from changing. You don’t spiral. You don’t break. You just get… stuck.

Stuck in this state of half-rest and half-feeling.

Stuck in habits that dampen the noise without actually bringing peace.

And that’s what I was doing on the edge of the bed. Choosing stuck over sleep. Numbness over rest. Not because I’m lazy or careless. But because sometimes the weight of everything (family, work, expectations, fear) feels too heavy to hold all at once. And numbness, for a brief moment, lets you pretend you’re not carrying anything at all.

But here’s what I’m learning: that moment doesn’t last. The weight returns. The noise comes back. The game ends, or doesn’t, and nothing’s really changed.

And beneath it all, my body still needs rest.

My mind still needs clarity.

My heart still needs care.

The thing I reached for didn’t meet any of those needs. It just pressed pause.

I’m not trying to demonize the small comforts we reach for. Some of them help. Some of them remind us we’re still human. But when I consistently reach for things that delay the discomfort instead of helping me heal, I start living in a shallow version of my life.

And I want more than that.

I want real rest, not just escape.

Presence, not just distraction.

Peace, not just quiet.

That night, I eventually set the phone down and slid under the sheets and fell asleep within seconds. I don’t remember what time my wife came to bed. I just remember waking up hours later, still tired, still behind, but a little clearer.

The temptation to numb doesn’t disappear, but I’m getting better at recognizing it sooner.

And that’s something.

I don’t always know what to do with the weight I carry. Some days I still reach for the easy thing, the soft thing, the thing that lets me forget for a few minutes. But more and more, I’m starting to notice when I’m doing it. And noticing changes things. Not all at once, but slowly.

And that is enough.

The Quietness of the Truly Important

 

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I don’t remember what time it was. It was dark, and I had been awake for hours.

I was standing in the living room of our small Sugarhouse apartment, bouncing up and down with our infant son tucked against my chest. He had colic and was slightly malnourished, though we didn’t know it at the time. He cried constantly, sometimes for hours, and nothing seemed to settle him except the slow, relentless rhythm of being held and moved.

So I bounced.

Back and forth across the living room. Sweat running down my back. Legs aching. Arms trembling from holding the same position too long. He would fall asleep eventually, and when he did, I had a system: I’d sit on the couch, support my arms with pillows, and angle my body just enough to doze off while still holding him. It wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t easy. But it worked.

And I could make it work night after night.

My wife and I were both working full time. I was still in school. Life was more pressure than margin back then. But I remember feeling something close to proud in those moments. Not because I was doing something heroic. Just because I knew my wife could sleep. That mattered to me. If she could sleep, even for a few hours, I could endure the rest.

For the first four months of our son’s life, we didn’t realize he wasn’t getting enough to eat. My wife was trying to nurse, and we assumed, naively, that things were going as they should. He was small. Too small, in hindsight. But we were new parents, doing our best.

When we finally started supplementing with formula, his body responded quickly. Our skinny, often inconsolable baby began to fill out. He slept more. Cried less. Caught up. And today, at 22 years old and six foot three, he’s doing just fine. But I sometimes look back on those early nights with a strange kind of tenderness.

Because I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the beginning of learning how many truly important things in life are also quiet.

There was no applause. No measuring stick. No one saw the hours I spent bouncing on tired legs in the dark. I wasn’t building a resume or crossing off a to-do list. I was just holding my son and hoping he’d sleep.

And somehow, that’s still one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever done.

We don’t often talk about the things that live in silence.

We talk about achievement, momentum, and ambition. We notice the loud things. But some of the moments that shape us most don’t make noise. They don’t draw attention. They’re just there in the corner of a dimly lit room, while the rest of the world sleeps.

Back then, one of my superpowers was functioning on very little sleep. That season didn’t last, but I’m grateful for it now. Not just because it got me through, but because I think I needed to learn that there is strength in stillness, too. Strength in presence. Strength in showing up for someone else with nothing to prove.

The world is so loud now, favoring volume, certainty, and acceleration.

But some of the most essential things, the ones that matter long after the moment has passed, happen in quiet repetition. In patience. In sweat and silence and unnoticed love.

That season with my oldest son taught me that being tired doesn’t mean you’re failing. That holding someone through the night is enough. That doing the same thing for the hundredth time without recognition still counts. It all adds up, even if no one’s keeping score.

Especially if no one’s keeping score.

These days, my life is louder. Busier. Full of projects and deadlines and people who count on me in different ways. But I still come back to that apartment. To that living room. To that exhausted, twenty-something version of me bouncing a fussy baby until sweat ran down my face, and then figuring out how to fall asleep without dropping him.

That wasn’t ambition. That wasn’t strategy.

That was love. And it was enough.

Sometimes, we look for meaning in big breakthroughs or public wins. But I’ve learned that what’s truly important is often quieter than we expect. It’s what happens when no one’s looking. It’s the care you give that no one applauds. The faithfulness that never makes it into a photo album or gets posted online.

That kind of quiet can feel invisible at times. But I’ve come to believe it’s where most of the good things in life begin.

The bouncing. The waiting. The holding. The choice to stay.

It doesn’t need to be loud to matter.

And that is enough.

How Tightly Do We Hold Our Pain?

 

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Some aches stay buried under the armor. Others rise to the surface when we least expect them: midway through a story, a song, or even a line from a stage play.

A few days ago brought a reprieve from the usual Utah August heat. Cooler than normal, though still plenty warm. By the time Footloose wrapped up at Hale Centre Theatre, it was past 10:00 p.m., and the air conditioner was still running in the car the whole way home. My wife and I didn’t say much which is usually a sign that the performance had stirred something deeper in both of us, beyond the choreography and the music.

The phrase how tightly do we hold our pain landed in my chest after a quiet scene between Ren McCormack and Reverend Shaw Moore. Two men, both young in different ways, carrying different kinds of loss. The Reverend’s son, Bobby, had died in a car accident five years earlier. Ren’s father had walked out on him and his mother. Different griefs, same impact: both lives rearranged in a way that couldn’t be undone.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Even as the show built toward its joyful finale — the moment when the teens of Bomont and their parents finally come together to dance — I kept circling back to the grip.

The hold we keep on what’s hurt us.

We say there’s no wrong way to grieve, and I believe that. But I also know there’s a point when pain stops being something we feel and starts being something we grip. We wrap our fingers around it, squeeze it like it’s the last thing tethering us to what we lost. And we tell ourselves that if we loosen our grip, we’re letting go of them.

It’s not a perfect comparison, but pain can be like holding a tennis ball. If you hold it lightly, you can carry it in your palm for hours. But squeeze it with all your strength, and your hand starts to ache within minutes. The weight hasn’t changed, only the way you’re holding it.

I thought of people I’ve known who’ve carried pain like that. And, if I’m honest, I thought about myself.

Years ago, I knew a woman who had a stroke. She got to the hospital quickly, and her neurologist believed she could make a full recovery if she committed to therapy. But therapy hurt. Learning to move her arm again was exhausting. Relearning how to walk was slow. Speech therapy made her feel embarrassed and frustrated.

So she stopped trying.

Without movement, her body began to seize up. The leg that might have carried her never fully worked again. The arm that might have reached for a glass of water stayed limp at her side. Her speech never returned to what it had been. She required full-time care for the rest of her life.

I can’t know what her future might’ve been if she’d kept trying. None of us can. But I know her chances at recovery were better than what she ended up with. She didn’t just feel her pain. She let it stop her from moving.

The irony is that recovery often hurts more than the injury itself. Physical therapy can be more painful than the accident. Emotional healing is no different. If we don’t move through the pain — if we never stretch the part of ourselves that broke — we can lose the ability to use it again.

On that drive home, I realized I’ve done my own version of this.

No, I haven’t been through anything like a stroke. But I’ve held on to smaller hurts: betrayals, disappointments, and moments where I felt overlooked, and gripped them like they were proof of something important. Like letting go would somehow invalidate that they mattered.

And if I’m really honest, I’ve done this not only with pain, but with patterns. I’ve clung to habits I know aren’t good for me out of comfort, out of familiarity, or just sheer stubbornness. Giving up soda, for example, should be easy compared to learning to walk again, but some days, it feels like letting go of something essential. It’s not the habit itself that’s hard. It’s how tightly I’ve wrapped my fingers around it.

The strange thing about holding pain tightly is that it can feel almost noble. Like we’re honoring the depth of the loss by refusing to let it go. We convince ourselves that if we set it down, or even hold it more loosely, we’re betraying the memory of what happened.

But maybe the deeper betrayal is when we let our lives shrink around the pain.

Like Reverend Moore, we sometimes mistake clinging for honoring. His grief turned into rules, into rigidity, into distance from the people he was called to care for. But when he loosened his grip — when he allowed the town to dance again — he wasn’t letting go of Bobby. He was making space for life to keep going.

Letting go almost never means forgetting. I don’t think loosening our grip means the loss stops mattering either.

I think it just means we’re making room for our life to grow again.

When I think about the tennis ball, I realize that what wears us out is not the pain itself. It’s the pressure we keep on it. Just like holding something lightly makes it sustainable, holding pain gently allows it to remain part of our story without becoming the whole of it.

That night, we drove the rest of the way home with the A/C humming. The August air outside had cooled, but I didn’t turn it off. My wife sat quietly beside me, both of us still in our own thoughts about the show.

And I kept thinking about the grip. How much energy it takes to squeeze something endlessly. How much more space there is in your hand when you don’t.

I’m still learning this. Still loosening my fingers.

And that is enough.

When Independence Becomes Isolation

 

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“Are you coming to bed tonight?” my wife asked. It was just after 10:00 p.m.

“I’ll be up. Eventually.”

She didn’t press. She usually doesn’t. I was in the middle of a problem for a client — again — knee-deep in a feature I swore I could finish before midnight. Two hours later, I finally pushed away from the computer. My shoulders ached, my brain was fried, and the issue was still unresolved.

That was the third night that week I’d told her the same thing, and it was starting to lose its meaning.

The only looming deadline was the one I’d created for myself. The client had been perfectly reasonable — happy to receive the product whenever I could deliver it. But I took their flexibility and turned it into something inflexible. If I didn’t finish it, I thought, it wouldn’t get done. And if it didn’t get done, the client would lose confidence. And if they lost confidence, we’d lose the deal. It always spirals that way — quietly, irrationally, and just below the surface.

I’ve spent most of my 25-year career believing that independence was the ultimate destination. After I left the company I helped found, I set out to build something entirely my own. As a solopreneur, working alone meant better margins, faster execution, and real-time decision-making. It has a clean, almost admirable air about it. But the truth is, it’s nearly impossible to deliver complex software projects on your own — at least not on any kind of promised timescale — because technical friction is always lurking.

There’s nothing scalable or sustainable about being a solo developer.

In the past six weeks, I’ve hired ten people — developers, client-facing staff, and an executive assistant I didn’t realize I desperately needed until she started. They’re better than I am at the things I used to grind through alone. They’ve solved in hours what used to take me days — or never got solved at all.

The first time I handed off a build and watched my team create something beautiful and functional, I felt a strange mix of elation and grief. The grief caught me off guard. For the first time, I had to admit that all those late nights hadn’t made me faster or better. I was just spinning harder.

I swore to my executive assistant that I’d stop checking my email forty times a day. I think I’m down to ten. The voice in my head tells me that’s part of why I hired her, but when I see she hasn’t checked email in two whole hours, I have to fight the urge to respond to a client who neither needs nor expects an urgent reply.

Still, I think: I should just take care of it. I should be the one to solve it. If I were better, faster, smarter, and more technical I wouldn’t need anyone else. So I stay up later than I should, telling myself it’s just “one more time”, even though I know better.

It never is.

The most persistent story in my negative self-talk is about fear — specifically, the fear of becoming unnecessary. If I’m not the one fixing things, what value do I bring? If I’m not essential, then what am I? I usually mask that fear behind a threadbare veil of commitment, integrity, and work ethic. But at the core, it’s just fear.

A few years ago, I wrote an article about self-actualization — the idea that we should strive to become everything we’re capable of becoming. I argued then that the pursuit can go sideways, turning into perfectionism, obsession, or even selfishness. I thought I understood it at the time. But I see it more clearly now.

Independence, I’ve learned, can become a shield. A defense mechanism that looks like strength. If I do it myself, I don’t have to ask. I don’t have to explain. No one can slow me down, and no one can let me down. But no one can help, either. And eventually, I forget how to let them.

That night, after not shutting the laptop, I stood in the dark kitchen, hands resting on the counter, staring into the quiet of our home. Everyone was asleep. I’d missed everything. Again.

And for what?

The problem I was working on wasn’t urgent. It could’ve waited until morning. Honestly, I could’ve left it for a few weeks and my team would’ve solved it faster than I was attempting to. But I stayed up anyway — not because I had to, but because I was afraid to stop.

I worked tirelessly on that issue for days with no resolution. Then I handed it off to two exceptional developers I’d just hired. They solved it in four hours.

I’m finally starting to accept — though I still forget a lot — that I have strong instincts and experience for helping clients solve real problems, but I’m not always the best person to code the solution. I’m learning it’s okay to step away. To not eat lunch at my desk. To go for a run again. To let my body sleep an extra hour when it needs it.

I love my work. It brings me so much satisfaction. I derive a lot of my self-worth from helping others solve complex things they can’t solve for themselves. So yes, I’ll still work late sometimes. I’ll still feel the impulse to fix everything myself. But I’m also learning to trust the team around me. To pause before I jump in. To recognize when someone else is better equipped to take the lead.

They’ve given me the space to do that. To say “I’ve got it” less often. To let them help. And we are so much stronger together than I ever was alone.

The independence that helped me start this business isn’t the same thing that will help it grow. And it’s certainly not the thing that will keep me healthy doing it. That version of independence — the one I built my early success on — started to turn into something smaller. Something isolating. I didn’t mean for it to, but it did.

Now, I’m unlearning that. Slowly. Imperfectly. I’m beginning to believe that the goal isn’t to be needed everywhere, but to be trustworthy where it matters most. Maybe the best kind of leadership isn’t about proving I can do it all — it’s about creating space for others to thrive.

I’m still figuring it out. Still letting go of old habits. Still learning to ask for help without apology.

And that is enough.

When Grace Finds You Mid-Stride

 

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I walked into a Walmart in Burley, Idaho a few days before Christmas. The first clerk I saw was moving at top speed. My eyes followed the line of shopping carts that stretched toward the back of the store. As fast as she could scan an item, another was handed to her. Dozens of men in leather jackets stood beside the carts like sentinels.

It looked like a scene from a movie, really almost too much to believe. A motorcycle club had raised tens of thousands of dollars to provide for children in need. With no cameras, no press release, no staged photos, they came and filled fifty carts; maybe more. The clerk scanned each item, one beep at a time.

Watching those “bikers” took me back to a man I once knew named Randy. Honestly, he had the kind of look that could have made him Danny Trejo’s stunt double. Rough. Everywhere. Tough on the outside. He rebuilt cars, rode motorcycles, and carried himself like someone you wouldn’t want to cross.

Which is why I’ll never forget the day I say across his living room from him as he wept. Tears rolled down his face as he shared a story so deeply personal that it broke through that tough exterior.

It was this beautiful, unexpected, unguarded moment of grace that caught me completely by surprise.

We usually talk about grace in church language. God’s gift. Unmerited favor. Forgiveness. But grace also has another meaning: courteous goodwill. A way of treating people with kindness when no one’s keeping score. And that’s what I saw in Randy that day. A man most people would peg as the definition of “unflinching toughness” showing me a side of himself I never expected.

And that’s what I saw again, years later, in that Burley Walmart. Men who might have been easy to stereotype — loud bikes, leather jackets, hard faces — quietly giving everything they could to children they didn’t know. Not for a headline. Not for credit. Just because it was needed.

Grace has a way of finding you mid-stride. You’re running errands, lost in the rush of your own schedule, thinking about deadlines or bills or how many things are still undone. And suddenly, grace is right there in front of you — interrupting, reframing, and softening.

I almost missed that moment with Randy that day. The long list of things I had to do that day almost led me to message my friend with my apologies that I wouldn’t be able to make it that day. But there I was anyway, being reminded in a gentle but forceful way that not everything is measured by efficiency or output. Sometimes the most important thing is the kindness that shows up. No permission required.

Grace also doesn’t announce itself. It slips in quietly — like tears on a tough man’s face, or a line of shopping carts filled with gifts, or a hand offered when you least deserve or expect it.

I forget this most days. I keep track of what isn’t finished, what hasn’t arrived, what feels behind schedule. But grace doesn’t care about my timetable. It just shows up when it’s needed. Sometimes in a stranger. Sometimes in a friend. Sometimes in me, if I let it.

I’m learning that I don’t have to go hunting for it. Grace has its own way of finding me, even when I’m in motion, even when I’m distracted, even when I think I don’t have time.

And that is enough.

Thanks for reading, and before you go. . .

I’m Aaron Pace. I write from the middle of things — life, business, fatherhood, faith, and the slow work of becoming someone I can live with. Not as an expert, but as someone trying to pay attention.

If this piece resonated with you, I’d be honored if you followed along here on Medium. I write — not because I’ve arrived, but because I’m finally moving again.

If any of this resonates with you, I wrote a book you might appreciate.
It’s called You Don’t Have to Escape to Be Free — a collection of my reflections on identity, meaning, and building a life I don’t want to run away from.

You can check it out here:

Aaron Pace on Books.by

What if the life you're trying to escape from is the very one you're meant to live? You Don't Have to Escape to Be Free…

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