To take back the reins of power from the Inner Critic of our mind, emotions, and actions, we need to learn to have better control over what we think on a regular basis. The path to banishing our Inner Critic starts by changing our thoughts. I’m sure that this sounds overly simplistic. But when you understand the ever-changing nature of our brains, you’ll see how effective changing our thoughts truly is.
Take Advantage of the Brain’s Plasticity
“The brain is a far more open system than we ever imagined, and nature has gone very far to help us perceive and take in the world around us. It has given us a brain that survives in a changing world by changing itself.”
— Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
Although we developed our self-critical patterns of thinking when we were young, and as a result, they are well-entrenched, their habitual nature works to our advantage. We can break and replace obsolete thought patterns with new, more supportive ones. Before you dismiss this as empty encouragement toward “the power of positive thinking,” understand that the process works because of neuroscience. Specifically, we’ll leverage the quality of our brains known as neuroplasticity: the ability to create new connections between nerve cells in response to change.
For years, the accepted model was that the nerve structure of the adult brain was fixed and locked in place. But more recent findings show that this stance is completely inaccurate. Instead of settling into a static mass of rigid neurons in adulthood, our brains are highly adaptable and, in fact, undergo continuous change during our lives. We can thank neuroplasticity for our ability to learn new facts, develop new skills, and adapt to new conditions.1
What we think about most gets the most space in our brains. Thought circuits and neuronal networks are constantly being created and dismantled. Mental focus and concentration push various regions of the brain to expand, while low activity in other areas signals their disuse. The more activity that a brain function, thought process, or skill gets, the more neural real estate it is allotted. Alternately, certain brain cells mark unused circuits and eventually prune them away for the expansion of those pathways crackling with activity.2
In a very real and concrete way, the thoughts that comprise our everyday thinking sculpt and mold our brains.3
What you think about is determined by what you pay attention to. The information that our brains and minds take in and make use of depends on how new and interesting it is, how strong a signal it has, or how much attention we give it. It’s attention that decides what our senses take in. Without attention, experiences don’t register in the mind and may not even be stored in memory. Brain imaging shows that when we pay attention to something, not only are the neurons involved activated, but neural activity in other areas is suppressed as a result.4 Such activation and suppression effectively strengthens one network of neurons over another. In fact, attention is so central to neuroplasticity that in her book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, author Sharon Begley suggests that training your attention can be considered “the gateway to plasticity.”5
The problem is that when the Inner Critic makes an appearance, the resulting self-critical thoughts steal our attention and thus our brainpower away from what’s in front of us. Our focus shifts away from what is happening in the present to our fear-tinged memories of previous disappointments or our anxieties of a negative future.
To think differently, attention is key. In his book, The Inner Game of Work, W. Timothy Gallwey eloquently describes how the combination of attention and focus is a natural barrier to the Inner Critic. He says, “...when we are giving full attention, self-interference is neutralized. In the fullness of focus, there is no room for [the Inner Critic’s] fears or doubts.”6 Our internal equilibrium is a direct result of our ability to maintain focus on thoughts that nourish and sustain our positive sense of self. When our Inner Critic reflex kicks in and distracts us from what we’re doing, redirecting our focus by thinking different thoughts is what “distracts” us back to our purpose.
Rehabilitate Your Thoughts
“When we direct our thoughts properly, we can control our emotions.”
— W. Clement Stone, author, businessman and philanthropist
Our brains’ plastic nature extends to emotions as well. For the purposes of silencing the Inner Critic, this is the mother lode of neuroplasticity. By altering connections between the thinking brain and the emotional brain, research shows that thoughts have the power to transform our emotions, behavior, and mind frames.7 In fact, the findings from various studies of employing new ways to look at, deal with, and generate thoughts to treat imbalanced mental states caused by distorted thinking have been the stuff that shifts paradigms.
These studies employed mental training based on cognitive therapy, mindfulness training, or a combination of both, which are all forms of meta-cognitive learning. Meta-cognitive learning is the deceptively simple yet powerful practice of learning from observing one’s mind and thoughts. What they found is this:
What and how a person thinks about things can mean the difference between staying depressed or returning to a more positive mind frame with reduced incidence of relapse.8
What and how a person thinks about things can mean the difference between feeling at the mercy of obsessive-compulsive disorder or feeling in control of it.9
Using a meta-cognitive approach to apply new methods to deal with self-critical thoughts helps people reverse deep feelings of anxiety, shame, and the tendency to self-attack.10 Therapies based on meta-cognitive learning target the thinking brain, but they are also highly effective at rebalancing distressed mental states.
Further results from these studies indicate that with the proper structure, our aspiration to banish the Inner Critic is more than attainable – it’s likely. Consciously thinking about our thoughts in a different way not only alters the very circuits those thoughts run on,11 but also reshapes how we process information,12 and creates a long-term impact on our thinking patterns and brain pathways.13
Our minds are so much more powerful than we realize. In our quest to quiet the inner voice of heightened self-criticism, our thoughts can heal.
Through observing our mind and thoughts, we can learn to identify distressing emotional responses and unhelpful thinking about the self and the world. By using a framework for reappraising thoughts that previously have been emotional hooks or triggers, we can relate differently to negative thoughts, feelings, and memories.14 As we begin to challenge inaccurate thinking and modify beliefs, we can transform unwanted moods and behavior patterns for the better. Our brains can learn how to function differently, and we can break our Inner Critic “reflex.”
Build A Whole New Mind Frame
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
— William James, psychologist and philosopher
If you feel like your vociferous Inner Critic has continuously thoroughly thrown you off balance mentally and emotionally, that’s because it has. The brain is very good at building a neural structure from negative experiences,15 which means that the Inner Critic gets stronger from the repetition of toxic thoughts. This weakens our mental foundation. By repeating the Inner Critic’s mistaken beliefs, we’re inadvertently training our minds to grow ever more self-critical. If we’re not open to changing our thoughts, we will continue to harm ourselves with this habitual hurtful thinking.
Fortunately, we’ve just discovered unequivocally that the brain can change. From your own experience, you know that when you’ve built skills to a level of mastery, but then you discontinue their use, those skills deteriorate. For example, you took piano lessons for seven years as a child, but it’s been so many years that you can no longer read music. It’s been ages since you’ve played tennis, so you’ve lost your power serve. The Spanish that you spoke so well during your year in B
uenos Aires twenty-five years ago has become embarrassingly rusty. When skills lie fallow, they become more difficult to employ with ease.
The fact that the Inner Critic is a result of habitual thinking like a skill or a reflex works to our advantage. We have the power to transform it and take away the source of its strength: the continuation of self-critical thoughts. It’s not the average daily thoughts that have the power to encourage robust mental health, however. It’s thinking differently by challenging unhelpful habitual thought-patterns and replacing them with new and improved ones that restore the mind to balance. And the exciting part is that this is not hopeful speculation or supposition; this is proven by science. The effects of intentional, mindful effort on brain function, errant neurochemistry, and even the very structure of the brain itself can be observed through neuroimaging.16
With the knowledge of neuroplasticity and our capacity to positively affect and transform the emotional brain, in terms of diminishing the strength of the Inner Critic and its hold on our thoughts and emotions, the field of what’s possible just opened up exponentially in front of us. In Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, Begley puts it beautifully: “We are not stuck with the brain we were born with but have the capacity to willfully direct which functions will flower and which will wither, which moral capacities emerge and which do not, which emotions flourish and which ones are stilled.”17 This, my friend, is a whole new ballgame. The opportunity to completely transform our Inner Critic dynamic is within our reach if we choose to pursue it.
But guess what? You already have chosen. By reading this book, you have already started upon the journey back to your Creative Self through banishing your Inner Critic.
The choice to focus upon different thoughts is at the very core of this process. For the noxious thoughts that the Inner Critic produces, a mind that questions, challenges, and chooses new thoughts to focus on is the antidote. By thinking new thoughts, the mind can make its own medicine. By intentionally changing our thoughts, we practice “top-down plasticity”18 which literally changes our brains.
Through thinking new thoughts, the mind can make its own medicine. To begin healing the affliction of an overactive Inner Critic that bars us from our creative selves, our minds are not only going to produce medicine, but also rebuild our creative health, one new thought at a time. With time and practice, our new mind frame will turn the Inner Critic’s once insistent roar down to the level of a whisper.
How will we do this? We’ll rewire our brains from the inside out through administering a Creative Dose.
Give Yourself a Creative Dose
“It is not enough that you have a refined sense why and when you become anxious: you must then do something.”
— Eric Maisel, Mastering Creative Anxiety
From this point forward, the habit of letting your Inner Critic disrupt your confidence and block you from the fullness of your creative capacities is over.
Through practicing certain kinds of mental training, our mind is capable of healing itself. Thus, much in the same way that medicine helps the body heal, the exercises in this book are named “Creative Doses.” The Creative Doses help us to create the medicine that is the antidote to the messages of the Inner Critic: new thoughts. Their purpose is to place you in a more clear-thinking and realistic mindset, helping you see the distorted attitudes of your Inner Critic more clearly and stop identifying with them. The exercises are designed to help refortify your sense of self – your Creative Self in particular. And much like medicine, the underlying concepts, practices, and tools of the Creative Doses have a cumulative effect: the more you use and apply them, the more effective they will become. We will also see ourselves and the path we need to take to get back to our creative power more clearly.
You may be thinking, “Think new thoughts?! If it were that easy, I would have done it already!” I hear you. Here’s the thing: most of us have not had all of the information or structure we needed to do that. Random, unfocused efforts produce random, unpredictable results. You may have been doing the equivalent of trying to throw darts while lacking both an actual dart and a bull’s-eye.
With the Creative Doses, however, we will embark upon a process of deliberate change based on the meeting point of neuroscience and psychology. Following in the footsteps of the studies using metacognitive learning, our process focuses on increasing awareness of our thoughts and emotions and shifting our attention to those that are more positive and supportive. Over time, this practice will effectively build new circuits of self-confidence, giving the well-worn self-critical thinking paths less activity and helping them to fade from disuse.
Despite sounding aggressive, this process of banishing the Inner Critic is actually a kinder, gentler approach. Force is not what’s needed. The Inner Critic has strong-arm tactics of manipulation through strong negative emotions down to a science. Fighting the Inner Critic doesn’t work, nor does criticizing or judging it. Resisting the Inner Critic doesn’t work either – I’m sure you’re familiar with the adage, “what you resist, persists.” No, if any of those tactics worked well, they would have worked by now. What will work is to institute the kind of thinking that is the polar opposite of how the Inner Critic operates. To start creating profound and meaningful change, we are going to become aware of the Inner Critic’s thoughts and the feelings that accompany those thoughts. We will look at them impartially, practice self-kindness, show ourselves compassion, and then choose to think and feel something different.
The absolute very first step is to not beat yourself up for having inner critical thoughts. There’s nothing wrong with you for having an Inner Critic! It’s part of the human condition. Remember, the Inner Critic is a mental protection response that we all have. None of us asked for those situations in which some scathing criticism came out of nowhere. None of us consciously opted to take on the opinions, fears, and mistaken beliefs of the people we looked up to. If you had learned differently, then naturally, you would do differently. Seriously, don’t beat yourself up. There’s no need to be self-critical about being self-critical. And besides, those days are about to become a thing of the past.
The next step is to acknowledge that you may be nervous about this process. The idea of changing this way of thinking that you’ve had for so long may make you apprehensive. You may be thinking, “Aren’t the self-critical messages what keep me motivated and able to achieve? Doesn’t the modified behavior that self-critical thoughts encourage prevent the threat of future criticism from coming to me?” Here’s the thing: The longer we listen to the messages, the more we forget who we are and the importance of what we have given up. The more we forget our home, and the farther we wander from our best friend and source of personal power. We lose touch with just how creative we truly are.
I will say this many times throughout this book: we’re not our inner critical thoughts. We are so, so much more. Inner critical thoughts hold us back from the prospect of fully realizing our greatness, our ability to feed our souls and contribute to the greater good.
Through the Creative Doses, we’ll cultivate a talent for noticing when inner critical thoughts appear or when our behavior is indicative of self-judgment, criticism, or doubt. We’ll become gifted in our new capacity to recognize and then soothe feelings of distress when they appear. The ability to choose one thought over another will become our superpower. We will become experts at giving ourselves the very thing that the Inner Critic been trying to create for us all of this time – a sense of safety and reassurance – through applying two powerful tools.
Allow me to introduce you to the practices that are the bedrock of this process and that are at the heart of our journey of transformation: mindfulness and self-compassion. Let’s learn what makes these two approaches so incredibly effective in our efforts to banish the Inner Critic, and then practice them with our first Creative Doses.
Become Full of Mind
“The gift of mindfulness, t
hen, is that by accepting the present moment you are better able to shape your future moments with wisdom and clarity.”
— Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind
Let’s be real: having a full-blown Inner Critic episode can be pretty awful. You feel vulnerable and unsure of yourself. (Even if it’s just under the surface, it’s still there.) Despite feeling as though a giant hole is about to suck you down to one of the nine levels of the Inferno, outwardly you not only need to appear as if nothing is wrong, but you’re also somehow still supposed to produce. Yikes!
The Inner Critic encourages something that Kristin Neff, the author of the book Self Compassion calls “over-identification,” which is “being so carried away by our personal drama that we can’t clearly see what is occurring in the present moment.”19 In the midst of over-identifying, it’s nearly impossible to realize that your self-critical thoughts are not an accurate reflection of reality. We’re so used to being caught up in our ingrained self-critical stories the Inner Critic is telling us that we can’t see they are just that: stories.
But without a tool to use or practice to put into place, gaining perspective is easier said than done. We need an approach that acts as a counterbalance, a methodology that will get us out of our internally focused self-critical thought loop, providing the mental distance to not only see the situation and ourselves clearly, but also perspective so that we can make better choices about where to direct our attention and place our focus. And in particular, we need a way to respond more evenly to the times our Inner Critic rears up and self-critical thoughts paralyze us, leaving us feeling vulnerable and defensive. Enter mindfulness.
Banish Your Inner Critic Page 5