Dealing with Your Inner Critic Part 5: Understanding the Difference Between Rules and Values
- Emmanuel Daniel
- Aug 17
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 18
The Same Activity, Two Completely Different Experiences
Imagine you have a day entirely to yourself. No obligations, no tasks, no one needing anything from you. You decide to spend the afternoon doing something you genuinely enjoy; reading, walking, gardening, watching something, cooking a meal you love. It doesn't matter what it is. Something that, when you picture it, brings a sense of ease.
Now sit with that image for a moment. Notice how it feels to imagine doing that thing freely, without agenda, without anyone watching.
Now adjust the scene slightly. You're doing the same activity, everything is identical, but this time there's someone else in the room. An authority figure. A critic. Someone holding a clipboard, watching how you spend your time, evaluating whether you're doing it correctly, productively, efficiently, or well enough. Maybe they're noting whether you're wasting time. Maybe they're silently judging whether you deserve the break.
The activity hasn't changed. But the experience has changed entirely.
This small thought experiment points to something psychologically important, and it sits at the heart of understanding your inner critic.
What the Experiment Reveals
The discomfort in the second scenario doesn't come from the activity itself. It comes from the presence of evaluation. Of being watched, judged, measured. And here is the part worth sitting with: for many people, that authority figure is already there. Not in the room in any literal sense, but inside, as a set of internalised rules about how time should be spent, what they should be doing, and whether they are good enough.
When we are living from rules, even enjoyment becomes performance. Even rest becomes something to justify. The inner critic shows up not because anything has gone wrong, but because the rules are still running, assessing, comparing, scoring. Should you really be doing this right now? Are you being productive enough? Don't you have something more important to do? What would people think if they knew how you spent your afternoon?
This is rule-based living. And its defining feature is that the internal experience is shaped not by what you are actually doing, but by whether you are meeting an invisible standard, one you may not have consciously chosen, and may not even be aware of carrying.
What Values-Based Living Feels Like Instead
Values-based living is not the absence of standards or direction. It is not the same as doing whatever you feel like, whenever you feel like it. The distinction is subtler, and more important, than that.
When you engage with an activity from your values, the motivation is internal and chosen. You read because you value learning or pleasure or imagination. You rest because you value restoration and sustainability. You spend time with people you love because connection genuinely matters to you. There is no clipboard. There is no evaluator. The authority comes from within, not from an internalised rule about what you must do to be acceptable.
The experience of that imagined free afternoon changes when you remove the authority figure. Not because the standards disappear, but because the relationship to the activity changes. You are no longer performing. You are living.
This is the shift that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) works toward, not the elimination of the inner critic, but a gradual reorientation of the internal landscape from which you are living. When your choices and actions are guided by values rather than rules, the critic has less to respond to. The perceived violations become less frequent. The self-criticism quietens, not because it has been argued into silence, but because what you are living from has changed.
Why This Matters, And What to Do Next — Rules and Values
The difference between rules and values is not always obvious from the outside. The same behaviour; working hard, showing up for others, pursuing excellence, can come from either place. What differs is the internal experience: whether the driving force is genuine meaning, or the avoidance of judgment and failure.
The reflection exercise in this post is worth returning to. Not just once, but as a regular practice of noticing: am I doing this because it matters to me, or because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't? That question, held gently and without self-criticism, begins to create the kind of awareness that makes genuine change possible.
Recognising the difference between rules and values is the beginning of a different relationship with your inner critic, one that is less about winning battles and more about changing the ground you're standing on.
If you're noticing that rules, rather than values, are driving much of your life, and that the inner critic shows up frequently in response, working with a psychologist can help you understand those patterns more clearly and begin shifting them from the inside out.
At The Harvest Clinic, our AHPRA-registered psychologists work with individuals across Australia to explore the deeper patterns behind self-criticism, perfectionism, and the internal rules that shape daily experience. Telehealth sessions are available Australia-wide, with bulk-billed options for eligible clients with a Mental Health Care Plan.
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