You Already Got the Part
Here’s a small experiment. For the next few minutes, just notice the voice in your head. Not the thoughts about your day, the commentary. The running assessment of how you’re doing. The little editor who weighs in on the email you just sent, the thing you said in that meeting, the way you navigated a conversation with your child this morning.
For a lot of us, that voice has one favorite subject: everything you’re doing wrong. And it keeps a meticulous file. It never quite lets us feel like we’ve arrived. And most of the time, we don’t even question it. We just assume it’s telling the truth.
This month, I want to invite you to question it.
Why This Month?
In Kabbalah, every month of the Hebrew calendar carries its own distinct energy, a specific opportunity available to all of us, no matter what sign we were born under. Virgo, known as the month of Elul, is the runway leading directly into Rosh Hashanah. It’s the month for honest self-examination, for taking real inventory before the new year begins.
And Virgo energy is exquisitely suited to that work. Virgo is an earth sign and expresses its energy through precision, attentiveness, and devotion to getting things right. At its best, that’s a gift: care, discernment, the refusal to accept mediocrity in any form. But every strength has a flipside, and Virgo’s is one so many of us know intimately. Perfectionism. The impossibly high bar. The incessant inner critic.
I know this energy well because not only am I a Virgo, but so was my father. He was a true Virgo—regal, determined, and a real perfectionist. So when I tell you this month is about learning to hold your standards without being held hostage by them, know that I’m still practicing it too.
The Voice That Isn’t Even Yours—and How to Tell the Difference
A little while ago, I had a reading with a medium. The first person who came through from the other side was my father. How did I know with certainty that it was him? His energy was described as impatient, refusing to wait for his turn. And he had a message for me. He said: tell Monica she doesn’t need to audition anymore. She got the part. She should just show up and enjoy it. I knew that voice was his, and I knew that message was for me.
I know that theme well. Always wanting to arrive, but never letting myself feel like I’ve arrived. Wanting to share wisdom, while being painfully aware of how much I still have to learn. And on that internal scale, the needle almost always lands on not enough. Hearing my father say it out loud stopped me in my tracks. Because how many of us are still auditioning for a part we already have and we’ve already earned?
Here’s the thing about that critical voice: often, it isn’t even ours. Which brings me to a different experience I had with another medium. Years ago, a self-proclaimed “seer” said some genuinely hideous things about me. to my face, in front of other people. That I was negative. That Michael and I weren’t soulmates. She went on and on and after five minutes I finally stood up and said, this is over. I don’t know who you’re describing, but it isn’t me. And I walked out.
I won’t pretend it didn’t shake me. Nobody wants to hear those kinds things. But I was, that day and still today, unshakably confident in three things that day: my relationship with myself, my relationship with Michael, and my relationship with the Creator.
The medium who shared my father’s voice wasn’t sharing niceties, she was channeling a message that was unmistakably authentic. The other medium shared only criticism, and even though I learned later that she had been put up to it, everything inside me still knew it was wrong. One was guidance, one was brutal.
So here’s the million-dollar question: which voice would you have believed?
Honest and Brutal Are Not The Same Thing
This is Elul<7i> and honest self-examination is the whole assignment. But there is a world of difference between honest and brutal, and the inner critic loves to blur that line.
The kabbalists teach that a person who rises above their negative actions can’t be judged for them, but a person stuck at the same level as their actions will be. The point of looking at what you’ve done isn’t to file it away as evidence against yourself. It’s to learn, to grow through it, and to choose to become someone different. Rumination doesn’t do that. Self-attack doesn’t do that. It just keeps you circling the same drain.
What actually creates change—and I say this after years of getting it wrong—is loving yourself completely. Not as a reward for finally being good enough, but because you are inherently worthy and always have been. Change happens when we love ourselves, not when we finally punish ourselves into being acceptable.
Catch the voice and check its ID. The next time the critic starts up, pause and ask two questions: Is it kind? Is it helpful? You’ll be surprised how often the answer to both is no.
Talk to yourself the way you’d talk to someone you love. You would never say to a dear friend the things you routinely say to yourself. This month, when you catch that internal spiral, try offering yourself the same tone you’d offer them. Not flattery, kindness.
Give yourself credit for how far you’ve come. Virgos are brilliant at cataloging everything they still have to accomplish. This month, catalog the other column too. The ways you showed up. The distance you’ve already traveled. The Light in you that you keep glossing over in your rush to find what needs fixing.
You don’t have to get this perfect, and if you’re a fellow perfectionist, I know that might be easier said than done. You just have to keep asking whose voice you’re listening to and keep choosing the one that is kind.
May this be the month you finally stop auditioning and remember that you already got the part.
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