Banish Your Inner Critic
Page 8
I don’t like working on something unless it’s my idea.
I find the ideas I come up with interesting and compelling.
I’m just a copycat.
6
Comparison Syndrome
When my friends are successful I find my own progress lacking.
I’m more focused on my own goals than what other peopleare doing.
Everybody seems to come up with better ideas than me.
6
Comparison Syndrome
When my friends are successful I find my own progress lacking.
I’m more focused on my own goals than what other people are doing.
Everybody seems to come up with better ideas than me.
7
Creativity Denial
I’m more analytical than creative.
I totally trust in my ability to come up with new ideas.
People who tell me I’m creative are just being nice
7
Overwhelm Obstruction
Being creative takes a long time.
I often have so many ideas I don’t know where to begin
I enjoy taking the time to be creative.
7
Creativity Misgivings
I must feel creative and inspired in order to create.
I trust my ability to come up with a lot of ideas when I’m working.
I’m nervous that at some point my creativity will run out.
For every answer where you checked a circle with a vertical line, the score is 1. For every answer where you checked a circle with a horizontal line, the score is -1. The highest number you can get for a triad is 3, and the lowest is -3.
A negative score means you tested strong for the issues covered in that chapter. A positive score means you did not.
Each upcoming chapter in the book is devoted to a particular guise of the Inner Critic. We’ll learn different ways to address each one, with targeted information followed by exercises designed to immediately put the concepts into practice.
For which forms of the Inner Critic did you score the highest negative or positive ? If you like, go directly to that chapter so that you can get the low-down on that form of the Inner Critic and start getting to work on quieting it immediately.
Or you can go ahead and read the book in the order it’s written and discover what you can do for the other guises as well.
It All Begins With the First Step
“There is nothing you can’t achieve with time, attention, and effort.”
— James Shelton, former Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Education
One of the most reliable ways to feel strong, confident, and powerful is to access and express creativity. Through the process of banishing our Inner Critic and reclaiming our creative power, we pave the way for the awe-inspiring unselfconsciousness that we admire in musicians, athletes, and other performers to shine through us. We will learn to distinguish between the voices of the Inner Critic and of the Creative Self. And ultimately, we will fulfill our soul’s longing to become more of who we are, let our ideas out into the world, and make it better by doing so.
I said it earlier, but it bears repeating: reclaiming creativity is an act of courage. Before, we may have balked in the face of our fears that the Inner Critic amplified. But now that we are fortified with the combination of the knowledge that our brain is actually our ally and with potent tools for transformation, we are more than ready to meet head-on whatever comes up in this process of getting back to our creative selves.
Our challenge: Remove mental obstacles in order to tap into our creative power.
Our goal: Unleash our suppressed creative potential and return to our Creative Self.
Our tools: Neuroplasticity, harnessing attention and focus, mindfulness, self-compassion, and the Creative Doses.
It’s time to begin the work of silencing the voice of self-doubt and unleashing your creativity. With time, attention, and effort, you’ll see a marked change in your creative life.
The people who seem to effervesce ideas and effortlessly unleash their creativity know where their power lies and have found their way home. The remainder of this book contains the road map back to your Creative Self, so now we will embark upon a journey to do the same.
Ready? Let the banishing begin!
Chapter 3 | “People Will
Think My Work Is Dumb”
- Judgment Dread
This chapter examines:
Attachment
Belonging
Negativity Bias and Fear Conditioning
Fear of Rejection
Cognitive Distortions
Confirmation Bias
Awfulizing
Positive Optimism
Embracing Uniqueness
Self-Acceptance
Learning From Criticism
Building Self-Trust
Choosing to Contribute
“You can either be judged because you created something or ignored because you left your greatness inside of you.”
— James Clear, author and entrepreneur
When I started playing basketball in middle school, by my own assessment, I wasn’t very good. And to my mind, that was a huge problem for an African-American girl who measured 5 feet 11 inc hes tall. As an adult, I’m now 6 foot 1 (185 cm), and my height is no longer an issue, but from the ages of 13 to 14 it caused me a great deal of angst.
Practice was great and I loved it. I enjoyed learning the plays, building my skills, and getting stronger. Furthermore, my team had a number of truly gifted athletes, evidenced by two consecutive seasons of being close to undefeated. One of them was my lifelong friend Anita, who was also naturally tall like me. Anita was a fantastic player and was one of the stars of the team. I didn’t feel I could hold a candle to her basketball abilities.
The games were another story altogether. I didn’t play in the games. More specifically, I wouldn’t play in the games.
At the prospect of an upcoming game, my sense of dread would slowly start to build within me. Whether at home or away games, my modus operandi was always the same. Dutifully, I went through the motions of putting on my uniform and doing the pre-game warm-up, doing my best to ignore my increasing anxiety. However, immediately after the team huddle, I would attempt to make myself as invisible as possible. I became a master at determining the exact location on the bench that ensured the maximum amount of invisibility: not the last person on the end (too easy to see!), but rather two or three girls in, so that I could try to disappear in between them.
Unfortunately, my hoped-for invisibility was never as long-lasting as I wished. At some point during every game, my coach Ms. Conine would lean down and call me. “Denise!” she’d say, beckoning me to her. Instead of jumping up with enthusiasm, I was engulfed in panic. My stomach would tighten with anxiety. I would beg, plead, and cajole her not to put me in: “I’m not ready, Ms. Conine! Let’s wait until later. Put me in at the end of the game instead – I’ll be ready then.” Much of the time it worked, but occasionally she would be immune to my pleadings. Admitting defeat, I would grudgingly give my jersey number to the folks at the referee stand to be put in the game.
Why was I so desperate to avoid playing in the basketball games? To put it bluntly, I was a very tall black girl. I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that everyone watching the games expected me to be an amazing player, and despite my effort
s in practice, I was sure that I wasn’t that player. What’s more, while I had slender arms and legs, I was “chunky” around the middle. At one point during that time, in an attempt to motivate me to slim down, my well-intentioned cousin Linda drew a quick sketch of an plump oval with two long lines coming out of the bottom and two shorter lines coming out of each side and a smaller oval on top. She pushed it across the kitchen table to me. “This is what you look like,” she said. So in addition to being afraid of being judged for my lack of prowess in basketball, I was also terrified of being seen by masses of people who I believed would invariably judge my slightly overweight body as awkward and wrong, with no possibility of ever becoming attractive. Despite fervent encouragement from my coach, I would not go onto the game floor. To me, it felt akin to setting myself up to be attacked by hundreds of unseen yet mighty assailants.
Looking back now, I can see how incredibly virulent my own Inner Critic was, paralyzing me into inaction to protect me from the prospect of being judged and criticized. By not playing in the games, I held myself back from building skill by learning from playing against people who were better than I was, but also from having fun. The irony is that had I gone ahead and played in the games, I would have been able to develop even sooner into the strong athlete that I eventually became. Because it wasn’t other people who were judging me, it was really me who was judging my own self. In doing so, I created my own kind of setback.
I’m sure you’ve had an equivalent experience in your own life, and can totally relate to how the intensity of the fear of judgment and criticism can prevent us from expanding our range of skills and reaching our potential.
Are They Judging Me? They’re Judging Me, Aren’t They?
Are you blocking yourself from sharing your ideas and allowing
your true Creative Self to shine through because of fear of being judged and criticized? See if any of these points mirror your thoughts and feelings.
Do you hold yourself back due to a deep-seated fear of what others think of you or your work and how they will judge you? Does a high fear of rejection keep you from sharing your ideas and being fully who you are?
“I’m afraid that people will think my work is dumb and laugh at what I produce.”
“I fear that people won’t like what I make, will think it is bad, and then think less of me.”
“I’m afraid that somebody is going to tear into my writing and tell me that I’m all wrong and stupid.”
“I’m afraid of REJECTION.”
Do you fear that your ideas are so “out there” that no one will really get them, and because of that, no one will support them (or you)?
“I’m afraid others will see my ideas as being too crazy to be plausible.”
“I’m afraid that no one will get my meaning.”
“I’m afraid that it will be hard to get others on board with my ideas, and that no one will support them.”
Dreading Judgment
“All humans want/need to feel loved and accepted, because in our evolved past our very survival may have depended on it.”
— The Compassionate Mind Foundation
It’s a normal workday, but for some reason, today you can‘t seem to get past your fear that your client won’t like anything you produce. Or you’re incredibly apprehensive about the prospect that your manager will be disappointed in your work. Or you practically have an anxiety attack envisioning someone, anyone, negatively judging your creations. You’re trying to get into the creative zone, but you’re frustrated because your thinking process has totally shut down. What’s wrong? Actually, this is not at all surprising: the fear of being judged and criticized is a huge block to creativity, and self-conscious thinking quite specifically blocks getting into creative flow.1
Unfortunately, we see these scenarios far too often on a professional level. For fear of being judged and criticized, we stick to safe solutions and suggestions. We edit the essence of ourselves out of our work to make it more acceptable and palatable for the masses. We may become inflexible and rebel by shutting down any input that could be helpful.
But this form of the Inner Critic, which I call Judgment Dread, has even farther-reaching ramifications for us on a personal level. Fear of judgment and criticism causes us to become perpetually anxious about what others may be thinking about us. As a result, we stay locked in old patterns of behavior that don’t serve us. We keep ourselves average, avoiding taking risks or trying anything new, and we stagnate emotionally. We suppress ourselves and hold ourselves back, curbing our actions and shutting down possibilities for our future. But is this how we want to live? Absolutely not!
If you judge and criticize yourself occasionally, don’t beat yourself up for it. Everyone does it to some degree, and it is part of being a human in human society. However, if the fear of being judged and criticized has become a predominant part of how you see the world, how you operate within it, and how you relate to yourself, it’s a problem. The fears and the self-consciousness that result from being afraid of being judged and criticized shut down the potential for a satisfying life, creative or otherwise. If you have a strong fear of being judged or having your work judged, learning how to manage Judgment Dread is crucial to letting your creativity flow again.
With the previous chapter’s focus on neuroscience being an integral part of starting our process of reclaiming creativity, it’s easy to forget that there are psychological elements to the origins of the Inner Critic as well. In the first chapter, I suggested that the Inner Critic was a “proactive mental threat-to-self system.” Based on the various psychological tools and tendencies of thought that the Inner Critic assembles to meet its primary directive of protection, the term “system” is apt.
A system is a set of interrelated and interconnected elements that together form a complex whole and that continually influence each other to maintain the system’s existence and to achieve its goals. The Inner Critic deftly employs a combination of our primal need to attach and belong, the brain’s tendency to scan for and catalogue threats, distorted thinking, and our tendency to seek confirmation of our beliefs and convictions. This special blend of mental inclinations is what gives the Inner Critic its proclivity for hypervigilance in the name of trying to protect the self. In the face of threats – both real and imagined – this very finely tuned Inner Critic “system” goes into high alert mode.
But it’s the use of a few of the more primal aspects of our mind that explains why the Inner Critic becomes such an influential force in our psychological makeup. The fear of being judged and criticized stems from the drive to ensure that our basic needs are met and that we’ll be able to create the next generation. In other words: survival.
Understand the Need to Belong
“We are evolved to strive for a sense of belonging, acceptance and respect in the minds of others because over millions of years these have been highly conducive to our survival and prosperity.”
— Compassionate Mind Foundation
When determining what our essential needs are, we need look no further than psychologist Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The first tier is related to the physiological necessities that we can’t live without: air, water, and food. When we can sustain our bodies, we need to achieve a sense of safety, protecting ourselves from the elements and other creatures with shelter and clothing. The next level of importance is the need to belong a group to fulfill the need to reproduce and carry on the next generation, known as “belongingness.” But with regard to the Inner Critic, it’s even simpler than this progression. Without meeting the human emotional need to affiliate with and be accepted by a group, getting the first two levels of needs met – physical survival and safety – is extraordinarily difficult. How do we get to belongingness? We become attached.
Attachment – an emotional bond with another person – evolved as a solution to threats to safety in the environment. Attachme
nt helped with an infant staying close to the parents, which improved the child’s chances for survival and staying alive to adulthood.
In terms of care for offspring, the purpose of protecting them was to ensure that they would live to reproduce. However, protection not only meant keeping the child out of harm’s way in the natural environment, but also within the social world of humans. Survival, for both caretakers and children alike, depended on being liked by the group. Caretakers are responsible for making sure that children understand the norms of the social group and follow social expectations to avoid negative sentiment from others. To encourage socially acceptable behavior and to maintain good social standing, caretakers used intense language in the form of criticism, triggering strong emotions that ensured that the messages would stick. We’re incredibly dependent upon the positive feelings of others towards us, as good feelings from others towards us generate a sense of safety. As a result, much of our everyday thinking is related to creating positive feelings and impressions in the minds of others.2
In many ways, attachment and belongingness can be seen as the source of the development of the Inner Critic, but it’s identifying with internalized negative messages from others that gives the Inner Critic its shape and identity.
How people perceive us is of such high importance that we are prone to take on the values and belief systems of those around us, further increasing our sense of belongingness and safety. Herein lies the trap, however. We don’t merely take on their values. We also take on and internalize their messages to us about ourselves, both positive and negative. It is the internalization and mimicking of the strong criticisms we’ve heard to modify our behavior for social acceptance that creates the Inner Critic.