How Introverts Find the Hero Within — Vanquish the Inner Critic Villain Keeping You Small

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I’m Greg Weinger. I have over 25 years of leadership experience. And yes, I am an introvert. Today, I’m talking with Amber Mikesell. She’s a former tech leader turned author, coach, and she’s leader of the Suivera community. Her work is helping people understand and silence their inner critic. She uses heart-centered practices that create a sense of true calm, clarity, and self-trust. In this episode, we’ll cover how to recognize the inner critic before it quietly starts running the show. How to use simple heart-centered practices to feel safer, calmer, and more grounded in the moment. And how introverted leaders can influence others not by being louder, but by bringing calm presence into the room. This is a conversation about self-awareness, regulating your nervous system, and what it really looks like to lead from the inside out. Here’s my conversation with Amber. Amber, such a joy and honor to have you on the show today. Well, thank you so much for having me, and thank you for such a beautiful introduction. I really, really appreciate you. And what you’re doing to help introverted individuals like myself to know that we have a platform. So thank you for what you’re doing. Thank you for saying that. It’s definitely an underrepresented, you know, part of many people’s personality, and we don’t shine a spotlight on it, and there’s just such beautiful strengths. And this side of people, even if they consider themselves extraverts on the whole, so tell us a little bit about your attraction to heroes and some of these mythic shows. Ever since I was little, there was always this desire in me to understand that he rose journey. And one more kid, we don’t understand the concept of the hero’s journey, but we still feel it if we really think back. And as I grew older, I really desired to understand what was that draw in me as a child to understand and to connect with that hero’s journey in comic books. I was probably five years old when I started reading comic books and finding myself connected to Dr. Strange and wanting to understand mystic arts or watching Star Wars that came out not too long after and desiring to be Luke Skywalker, not Princess Leia, but Luke Skywalker and outstating the galaxy. And I wanted to understand what was it in me that was so attracted to that hero’s journey. Did I really have the ego boost that I wanted to be the one everyone was looking to or was it something even deeper than that? And as I began to understand that psychological aspect, it was really much deeper and it’s something I feel nearly all of us navigate, which is how do I understand how to be the hero of my own life story, not that I need other people to look to me to be the hero, but how can I look to me to be the hero? And that’s where it really kind of fell into place for me and why I’m so attracted to it. I guess I’m imagining this was over time. I think I was all of five years old when Star Wars came out and so how long did it take you to come to some of these realizations about that? What this meant to you? I was in my late 30s, early 40s by the time it really sank in. Of course we go through all these different heroes, journeys, arcs in our life, right? We go through those challenges where we’re faced with the hardships in life and we have to understand are we going to rise up and meet them or are we going to cower back and hide away from them? If we rise up to meet them, how are we going to meet them? Are we going to meet them as the villain and take our anger out on everyone or are we going to meet them as the hero and be self-protective and protective of others? There’s all this different arc in it. And if we become mindful of how we are embarking on that hero’s journey, then things begin to shift for us. Am I becoming the hero? Am I hero’s story or am I becoming the villain in my hero’s story in my own mind? And so once I caught on to it, I was like, oh, even in the movies I watched or the comic books I read, sometimes the superhero could turn dark and become the villain of the story until they caught themselves being the villain of the story and they changed back. How many times have I done that in my life? How many times have I unknowingly become the villain in my own life story? So when I could find something to attach to like that and I had my own story arc, things just changed. So I’m curious about the turning point for you. What was some of your story arc that kind of put you on the path that you’re on now? So when I was young, of course, as I described, I had this attachment and I would catch my inner critic, spring up. It has a kid. You just want to blend in so much that you shoot away. But once I got into my corporate life and I found myself going into meeting after meeting and shifting my core characteristics who I am as a core being. And what I know I’m here, what I now call my superpowers, what I know those are and I was hiding them away in order to meet the corporate agenda and developing things that looked so good on paper, but the heart of it was just not there to be in service to the very people that we said we were there to be in service of. I found my inner critic just constantly in motion and it was hard for me to ignore it anymore. You have to be this mask and this mask and this mask in order to blend in to the corporate flow. And if you don’t then then you’re not going to keep arising up the corporate ladder who cares about your personal agenda or your moral agenda. And I reached a point in that flow where I couldn’t do it anymore. It was that battle between this villain and I saw inside of me and my superhero, my superpowers that just needed to come out. And it wasn’t anything bad that the company did. It wasn’t anything bad that I was doing. It was just that my superhero couldn’t stay hidden anymore. I had a different purpose. And that’s when I really had that crisis of faith that most heroes have and it rose up so strongly and made that I couldn’t deny it anymore. And I walked in one day and I quit. That was it. It sounds like the inner critic was tempting you to be not true to yourself and to deny what you see now as your greatest strengths. And in a way it was that environment, that culture which in the terms I talk about on the show are things that ignore a lot of this is quite a strength of people who are quieter. It’s the environments, the rooms where people are talking on top of each other where there’s not a lot of planning in advance which disadvantages people are thoughtful and reflective and denies them a chance to prepare and do their best work. So it’s kind of forcing them into this box. Am I in the right vicinity here of the type of thing you were going through? Very much so. And in addition to all of those things, it was almost as though the heart for not only the people we were in service of but the heart for the people who were within the organization, understanding the diverse approaches. Everybody brought something different to the table and that’s actually a strength, not a weakness. So I’m in an executive level meeting and because everyone didn’t behave the way those top few did, it was very much steam rolled over, not listened to. It created such a one-way mentality that we were losing sight of the very purpose, the very mission of what we were there for. And my overarching sense was if we could just take heart-centered knowledge and mix it with that data-driven approach, if we could allow everyone to come to the table and see how it could all mix together, that goes to that coherence that you are speaking of. Even organizations have the ability to have coherence. And if we could find a way to get to that state, I think we could just be beyond powerful. Yeah, absolutely. It’s completely aligned with how I view organizations when they’re most successful and when you’re creating the space for everyone and where everyone is included or a free to contribute and feels valued. I think we’re using the word heart here because it’s intangible. But I think if you’re a little bit awake, you felt that. So you’ve been in these rooms where everyone is energized and there’s not some kind of negative drain in the room or one voice dominating. And the creativity that can be produced in that environment is just so much beyond what one person’s idea can produce on their own. There’s one other part about this that I want to draw out and I think it’s connected to the heart and that is companies are moral entities. And when you’re at the top level, there are moral decisions that you make that matter all the time. It’s incredible. You’re making choices that impact your organization and you’re making choices. moral decisions and but they’re also how they impact people in the world and how do you make those decisions? It’s just very obvious if a company is somehow connected to the heart. Are they connected? Are they grounded in decisions that are good for people or not? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And it also matters bringing in that diverse viewpoint that you talked about, including those who are highly introverted, those who are highly introspective, those who are highly extroverted and are constantly processing externally and have those voices and diversity in all different angles so that we have a set of understanding for how will all come to the table. And I think that that is something that as we’re developing Svivaera, we have created a set of ground rules for when we hold meetings, this is how we come to the table. And that also includes giving space for everyone to speak, no matter how long it takes to speak because not everybody verbally processes at the same rate. So give everyone space to speak. These things matter and the more that we can become aware of everyone and everyone’s process. And we’re given space for our process. So many beautiful things come out of that. You’re talking now about your business, your community that you run. So you’ve taken the lessons that you learned in the corporate world and you’re applying. You’ve created a business and an organization that is running on different rules. Yes. So many good topics here. I wanted to close out on the inner critic. If you’re feeling this negative voice, what is your recommendation to listeners? How do you go about taming the inner critic? Well, I would say the first step is becoming aware that it’s there because ultimately we grow up with it and we lose sight that it has taken over 80% of our thought process. There’s been tons of research and I would encourage anyone who’s a researcher like myself to go out and see all of the studies that have been done. But on average, 80% of the average person’s thoughts are negative and cycling. And then 18% are neutral and task oriented, leaving only 2% of our thoughts for positive. So the very first thing we can do is just become aware of that voice and begin to notice what it’s saying to us. And when we hear things even in that 18% where it’s task oriented because the 80% is really hard sometimes to go after. But if we can hit that 18% that’s task oriented that says, oh, I have to do this. And we can just switch that to, oh, I get to do this. It just changes that whole feeling of, oh, I have to do this to a more positive like, oh, I get to do this. I live in a place where I get to do something that I choose to do that is mine specifically to do. And it feels so much more empowering. Then you start to chip away at that 18% and that 2% becomes 3% that 3% becomes 4%. And now we’re working with numbers and laws of average so that as that 18% starts to lower, you can offset that 80% and suddenly things start to shift in your favor and you can catch that 80% even better. Yeah, you start to build some momentum in that direction. 80% is pretty overwhelming and I can see where you get these comparisons to a supervillain. Like you have a supervillain living in your head saying really mean devastating things to you all day long. It’s like it’s amazing how cruel that is for us. Absolutely. And I would often tell myself it’s like being trapped in a dungeon of doom, right? Constantly being bombarded. But that 18% is my lifeline. So if I can change that 18% just by sheer law of numbers, it begins to tilt that a little bit to where I see the way out and I can start to pull some of the power away from the supervillain and see his power more clearly or her power more clearly. However, even vision, you’re supervillain. Yeah. However you gender, you’re supervillain. Exactly. So why can’t you just go right at the positives? It’s like I’m wonderful. I’m great. Our brains don’t work that way. I wish they did. Yeah. Yeah. It’s really hard to believe that I’m wonderful. I’m great when you know we don’t believe it. Unfortunately, psychology doesn’t work that way. We know we’re fallible and you know that 80% has a lot of sway that’s pretty powerful so it can kind of pick that apart pretty quickly. So we’ve got that. We’re up against that. We’re building momentum. So we start by turning things that are neutral more and more to the positive and creating a sense of freedom. Where does the heart coherence enter in? Say a little bit more of what you mean by that and what is it doing to our bodies? Absolutely. Heart math institute is really the recognized space to go and dive in if somebody is highly interested in it. I can’t sing their praises enough. But in learning about heart coherence, it is where the energy of the heart, the energy of your brain and your nervous system all just kind of align together and become in harmony in sync. And that alignment because we have neurons in our heart. We have neurons in our brain. Our nervous system runs through all of it. And we’re beginning to learn even the neurons in our stomach and our gut play a huge part in this too. So getting that all aligned and in harmony and in sync, you get to a state called coherence. And you fall into this relaxed state of being and into the presence that you are. So when we talk about being in the present moment, people would listen to Eckart Toles or you would hear about that power of now or power of presence. Getting your physical beingness to be in this coherent state where the nervous system knows I’m safe. I don’t need to be stressed by all of these external stressors because my internal beingness is calm. It’s safe. We’re aligned. That’s really the state of coherence. And the beautiful thing is if you’re in coherence and you meet someone else who’s in coherence, you create this field of coherence. Your unified coherence can create this amazing field of just calm presence for everyone who’s around us. And it starts to regulate their nervous system and they don’t even know why. We’re talking about techniques to calm your nervous system and this recognition that your nervous system is not just locked up in your brain, it’s more fully embodied. And it’s something to be experienced. I think most people, even if you haven’t experienced it recently or even as adult, there are times it is a child where I have memories of lying in the sun as a kid or being in a swimming pool and just everything feels right. But there are techniques, there are ways to get back to that as an adult. And if you’re just thinking at first glance, how can this affect somebody? But haven’t you been in a room where or just around someone whose presence just makes you feel calm or maybe it was a grandmother or something like that? Something similar is going on and this is something that you can bring into your everyday world into the workplace. Yes, absolutely. The tools and techniques are so helpful to regulate and assist in getting into that coherent space so much so that it’s like working out. If you work out and you train and you get to a space physically and then you don’t work out for a month, the moment you start working out again, your body remembers, you have that muscle memory and it’s easier to get back into shape. It’s the same thing with coherence. If you utilize certain tools to regulate your system and then you have a busy time and everything is going crazy. That’s, I mean, it’s life. I would love to pretend that it’s so super easy all of the time and I’m always regulated but I am not as Zen Buddhist monk. I’m not going to lie. We did the book tour. I was not regulated. I was not coherence. But the moment I went back to the tools and practices that I use on a regular basis, it took me right back to that coherence so it’s very helpful when you practice often. Awesome. Maybe you could walk us through some of those tools. What are some beginner tools and what does it look like if you have a really solid practice? Happily. So, one of my favorite beginner tools and I still use it. As I said on the book tour, I would use it often just to, it wouldn’t re-regulate me but it would keep me from going off the deep end. Always good. And it’s college. Yeah. We all need one of those. It was called the 60-second heart drop because it’s very easy. I found, I call myself a social introvert so I can be in social settings but it is very challenging for me when it’s large, large crowds and I’m the one who always wants to be off in the corner having the deep conversation and not out having those surface level conversations. Not that they’re bad, they’re just not my zone of genius on something like a book tour you’re meeting a lot of people. So it was a heightened area of anxiety for me and I had to use a 60-second heart drop to bring me out of my head because I was thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking and it got my inner critic going and I was just spinning and I was saying the right thing, does this person think I’m weird? We can’t help it. It’s human nature. And the 60-second heart drop allowed me to take all of those thoughts and bring them into my heart. So I just put my hand on my heart and I would breathe into my heart and follow my breath, breathe in, follow my breath down into my heart and as I did I would visualize all those thoughts that were spinning in my brain coming down into my heart and wrapping love around them and remind myself, I’m human and it’s normal to have these thoughts but I don’t have to let the thoughts own me. And then as I would exhale I would let go of the thoughts. So I would set my time on my phone 60 seconds and keep doing that until I could feel myself grounded back into my heart, radiating and come back into the situation with that energy instead of cycling. And we’d last for about an hour, at least I had a practice, right? That’s pretty good. Return on investment there. Spend a minute and you get an hour of calm under a minute. That’s pretty powerful. That’s the beautiful thing about being human. We are all powerful. It’s just remembering that we’re powerful and not allowing a situation or a thought to take that power from us. This is really important, it’s a really important tool for our leadership because you’re constantly going to situations where things are always going wrong, basically. Unexpected things are constantly happening. You’re going from situation to situation. Sometimes people are able to deal but then sometimes people get upset or they’re a conflict. Having this ability to be calm and influence the people around them is very much up. They can traverse alley. I think that because of your calm you have a better chance of accessing this part of yourself having this influence on others and the organization. So tell me your experience about calming people in challenging situations. I have a question for you quickly and then I will definitely answer your question. You mentioned that as an introvert you tend to stay calm. I have found and I can only speak to my experience. I may appear calm on the outside but often I am not calm on the inside as an introvert. And that energy can bleed over because people can feel that I’m not calm on the inside, even if I appear calm on the outside. So have you ever had that as an experience as an introvert? 100%. Yeah, I spent a lot of portions of my life through my 20s and into my 30s dealing with pretty significant anxiety in situations because there’s a lot of energy and I didn’t really have a way to manage that. And so absolutely when you are anxious and worried about something there’s a powerful transmission of that into the people around you. You’re saying things that are probably intended to alarm people. So my natural instinct is to just be internal and so I may look calm but not become. And so my transformation is to actually be calm to do things in my life that actually help me manage more challenging situations, more powerful energies, confrontations, things like that, just emotions so that they move through me and I do really bring this calm presence in situations because I feel like that’s my strength. That’s an area of strength for me. And I guess that’s what makes me say that I believe that that is a potential area of strength for many introverts in general. Maybe I’m overgeneralized. That’s my suspicion. No, I agree. Thank you for answering because that brings me to my answer which is I do feel that as introverts because we are so introspective and we dive inward we have that potential but we don’t always access that potential. I know I certainly wouldn’t have been. And when I talk to my other friends who are highly introverted as long as that inner critic is in there and we’re kind of beating ourselves up and we have that anxiety then often we’re just we’re creating that anxious energy that’s going out versus that calm presence and holding that coherence or that presence energy that you’re talking about that does actually calm the whole room and it goes back to what we were talking about earlier and what you brought up so well which is when you’re when you walk into a room and you have a person in there or they walk into the room and they have that presence of energy that you just feel it and you can’t explain it. And so as you said catching up with being able to explain it but there’s just this presence of energy and you rise to meet that energy that’s what an introvert who knows their presence and holds it and even when everything else is going crazy they don’t have to speak to everything they can let it all unfold because then everybody does feel hurt but they analyze everything that’s coming in they see how everything is moving because they’re present in the moment and not thinking forward to what might happen they’re not thinking backward to what someone said that upset them and now they’re flowing through all that upset because their feelings were hurt they’re present with everything that they’ve gathered through the whole conversation and they’ve held that energy and now they can speak and put it all together and bring everyone together in the moment to say what is our resolution based on everything that everyone presented which is what I have found is so strong in the leaders I’ve had the honor of being around who are strong introverts and hold that presence and take the ego out of it it’s not their ego that needs to be served it’s the purpose that is being served and their presence is in service of the purpose and the people around them and it is magnificent when it all culminates love that description of how that can unfold and the exact influence that a calm present leader can have and what you’re describing to me in a sense there’s holding the space for everyone it’s taking all of the upsets for all the cross currents and not holding onto it and allowing those to be and through that presence you’re able to guide things and so this is my third topic influencing with calm presence you just described that beautifully thank you will you demonstrate it beautifully so I can describe it and you can demonstrate it we’re all works in progress but you know it is it’s wonderful when you feel like you’ve had a positive influence on a situation that’s maybe going sideways yes yeah how does someone go about developing that capability such a good question I’ll practice it by saying we are all in various stages I’ll put it in my link go our super hero journey right so it is very case dependent but again the first thing is understanding where you are on your journey most of us are allowing life to happen to us instead of with us and for us and so as you described in your own journey you recognized where you were on your path and by recognizing where you were you could create an action plan or a strategy to get you to where you desired to be and then you understood okay I know who I am as my learning style I know what I have going on in my life so I know how I can introduce growth strategy if we don’t understand where we are who we are and how we learn best and how we can integrate growth into our lives then we become very challenged at integrating any kind of structure whether it’s a physical workout plan internal emotional workout plan we just really have to start with those core basics then we can start to say okay I know that I want to become a calm present leader if I am not a leader right now maybe I’m listening to this and I’m not actually leading a team well you still lead your life so if you want to be a calm present leader start with how you lead your life and how can you start to integrate little things into your daily life that make you calm and present and then pick one area with that maybe it’s with your kids sometimes they don’t always do what we want them to do yeah sometimes sometimes all the time so how can you start to become more calm and present in that situation yeah that’s really a good suggestion and I would just add that even if you’re not a leader in your workplace there are ample opportunities for leadership every single day the leadership by example is one of the most powerful ways to lead and how you respond in situations and bringing a calm presence you can start doing that without any titles whatsoever and it’s by the questions you ask and it’s by what you raise objections to I’m really proud of the people I work with who aren’t formal leaders when they display leadership like that it really warms my heart inspirational to me because it’s really not about the title we all have these opportunities to lead every day I love that this time is flown by way faster than I wanted it to could you tell a little bit where people can find out more about your work maybe a little bit about your communities with Vera and your buck of course well thank you we have a lot of information available at suvera and that’s sui the era.org we are a nonprofit all belief system organization where our whole mission is love we really truly believe that loves the common language that binds everyone together and if we come together from that space of love then we can learn from our commonalities and our differences and so that’s a jumping off point to just explore belief systems religions cultures and we have grown to about 1.3 million people all coming together so each other from a different way so yeah it’s been pretty amazing we have a community out there that august together to talk about silencing your inner critic and all of the information about the book is out there too so you can can learn more about us there we also have a podcast called the heart leader podcast and you can find that anywhere that you listen to podcasts so we look forward to sharing this podcast out with our podcast community and our sui Vera community that’s fantastic definitely check that out and you also mentioned heart math that’s something for people who are interested in the whole this whole heart coin here inside Dan yes they are phenomenal we love them so much for all of their scientific investigation into the energetics and the scientific properties so for those of us who are very okay I love the experience but I also desire to satisfy my brains desire to understand they’ve made that leap yeah fantastic and what’s the name of your book again the name of my book is silencer inner critic thank you yeah it recently won some awards so very grateful from the book fest so we were nominated and won into categories and we made it bright orange you can’t miss it on a bookshelf it you know you can see it from a mile away and we are in the process at this moment of creating a graphic novel for kids between the ages of 12 and 18 but it’ll be cool enough that adults like me who are really geeked out on comics will read it too so that’ll come out next year awesome we’re coming after you 80% of thoughts we’re coming after you we are take it down yeah thanks so much for being on the show today Amber well thank you for having me I could talk to you for hours all right let’s take a minute to reflect Amber reminds us that the inner critic is often far more active than we realize the first step is just noticing that voice and bringing more awareness to it instead of just letting it run on autopilot Amber also shows us that calm is something that we can develop whether it’s a heart centered breathing exercise the 60 second heart drop or just learning to come back to ourselves in stressful moments presence is something that we can build maybe most importantly this conversation reinforces that quiet leadership is powerful leadership when you regulate your own energy you’re not just helping yourself you’re changing the room around you you listen better you lead better and influence comes from a much sturdier place if this episode speaks to you subscribe to the introverted leader so you don’t miss another episode I’m Greg Wanger keep leading quietly and I’ll see you next time a payment tip from Northwest natural Northwest natural offers flexible payment plans and build discount programs for customers who need extra support that’s good energy reliable and ready learn more at nwnatural.com