Banish Your Inner Critic

by Denise Jacobs

  Mark or tag the accomplishments in which you employed creativity.

  Then, mark and note which talents, abilities, and qualities within you lend themselves to your creative capacity.

  If you are hard-pressed to think of when you were creative, then do this:

  Think of a time when you reached a state where you lost time, had a peak experience, and/or felt empowered from what you accomplished.

  What did you find from this process of structured recollection?

  Are you surprised at just how much creativity you’ve exercised in your life?

  Readjust to Trust

  “Can you remember who you were before the world told you who

  you should be?”

  — Danielle LaPorte, author, speaker, entrepreneur

  Have you encountered a four-year-old lately? At this age, many children are very much themselves. They are clear about their likes, dislikes, and wants. They are wonderfully opinionated and sassy. They are in a fabulous place in their lives: full of self-assurance and blissfully unaware of the impending self-doubt that will drive them to start trying to become someone they think they should be.

  It’s beyond our control – almost everything in the world tells us from an early age that we need to place our trust in authorities outside ourselves: parents, elders, teachers, doctors, the government. We learn early on to turn a deaf ear to the grounded voice of our souls and our knowing gut and start to listen solely to society’s messages coming through the mouthpiece of the people in our lives.

  When I was 24 years old, I had just graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in international studies with a minor in French. Throughout my college career, several professors had taken me aside and applauded my skill in writing – one even got me a job as a writing tutor in a campus learning center. Right around my graduation, I hesitantly shared with my father that I thought I would like to become a writer as a profession. His immediate response was, “Do you know how hard it is to get published?”

  Now, let me be clear about one thing: my father was no slouch. In 1957 at the age of 20, he completed his flight training and got his pilot’s license – no small feat for a young African-American man growing up essentially without parents in inner city Detroit before the Civil Rights Movement. He was the first person in his family to graduate from college with his degree in aeronautical engineering. As a hobby, he built and flew experimental aircraft. My father was brilliant, driven, and accomplished. Yet, despite all of the barriers that he broke in his own life, my father still believed and proliferated the lies that run rampant throughout society: that artists starve, that creativity is what you do in your free time and not as a job, and that very few writers ever get published.

  Even though deep inside myself I knew that my ability to write was genuine and deserved to be respected, cultivated, and expressed, I was unsure of my abilities, nervous about my future, and wracked with self-doubt. I took my father’s advice to heart, and spent three dismal years after college that felt like an eternity doing soul- and creativity-stifling office temp work, until I taught myself HTML and boldly entered the tech world.

  When the economy crashed in 2008, I was let go from my well-paying project management job at a local software company. Despite just having bought a house two months previous, I knew that the layoff was largely fortuitous. Instead of continuing to do work that I despised but thought I “should” do, it was my chance to finally pursue my dream of becoming a writer and a speaker. I dug down to unearth the deeply buried self-trust that had lain dormant within me for more than 15 years. Five months later, I had a conversation at a tech conference party that led to my first book publishing deal practically falling into my lap. Fast forward to the present, and you are reading the product of my second serendipitous book contract.

  Self-doubt equals an absence of self-trust. When we don’t trust ourselves, we second-guess our own thoughts, opinions, likes, wants, and desires. When we lack self-trust, the life we’re living is not authentic to our own soul, but is based on the goals, values, and dreams of people outside of ourselves.

  Getting back to the level of trust in ourselves that we had when we were younger is a critical component not only of allowing our creativity to flow, but of making magic happen in our lives. We’ve put our trust in the rules of the world – often prescribed by uninformed and fearful people – and many of us have lost our way. Let’s relax back into our own skins and learn to trust in ourselves, our abilities, and our truth again, and in doing so, return to center and come home to our creativity.

  Creative Dose: The Parallel Trust Universe

  Purpose: To return to trusting yourself and your capabilities

  Being focused on what we’re afraid we don’t know and what we fear we can’t do – in other words, not trusting ourselves – blocks us from accessing what we actually do know and can do.

  The next time you are anxious about not having a good enough idea, or that your work won’t be good enough, or that you don’t have enough expertise, stop.

  Take a deep breath, and recognize where you have been focusing: on lack. Realize that by being anxious about the potential of lack, you are preventing yourself from accessing what already does exist there and is available for you in terms of ideas, skills, expertise, and performance.

  Take another deep breath, and imagine this alternative reality:

  What would I feel like if I trusted that I had the answer or capability?

  What mode of thinking would I be in right now?

  How would I physically feel in this mode of thinking; how would it feel different from how I am feeling now?

  In place of being anxious, what are the actual thoughts that I’d be thinking now?

  Take another deep breath, and make a conscious decision to adjust to a place of trusting yourself and to operate from that mindframe.

  Be A Friend Indeed

  “Self-trust is the essence of heroism.”

  — Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet

  Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the bestselling books Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic, shared in a recent speech that even she has moments when she beats herself up for perceived shortcomings and has to consciously work to stop her brain from doing so. Her suggestion to break out of the cycle is to “be kind to yourself.” She continues, “you must give yourself unconditional self-friendship.”6 In other words, practice self-compassion and self-kindness.

  Unfortunately, when our feelings of anxiety about alleged deficiencies are at the forefront of our consciousness, we become the opposite of a friend – we become our own worst bullies. Consequently, we have lost trust from the deeper, more vulnerable parts of ourselves.

  Learning to be more consistently supportive of yourself is the key. By showing yourself that you will make a conscious and conscientious effort to be a friend, champion, and boon companion to yourself again, you can win this trust back. As a bonus, you’ll bolster self-confidence through breaking the tendency to seek external approval and will be better able to interact with others while you move from being a bully to yourself to being a hero.

  Creative Dose: Quantum Companionship

  Purpose: To be abundantly kind to yourself, past, present, and future.

  When I started really working on my own Inner Critic and tuned into to my self-talk, I was (and sometimes still am) shocked at how mean I can be to myself. I realized that my internal hypercritical reprimanding was being said to the equivalent of a child: 3 years old, 7 years old, 12 years old, etc. When I see someone in public talk to an actual child that way (and we have all seen this), I’m frequently moved to angry tears. Practically sick to my stomach, I have to hold myself back from rushing in to shield the child from the verbal chastisement with a hug and soothing him/her with kinder words.

  I think indignantly, “how can someone speak to a child like that?!” The answer is: because t
hat’s what people learned from experience, and that’s how they now internally speak to themselves – just as I was doing to myself.

  The adult that the world sees now is merely a box that contains the child that we were before.

  To remind myself to be more compassionate and gentle to my internal kid, I’ve hung my favorite photo of myself as a baby on the wall of my office so I can see it while I’m working. I’ve changed the lock screen photo on my cell phone to a picture of myself at age four: with a sweet, spunky smile on my face, braids in my hair, full of wonder at the world, and naturally overflowing with my own unique version of creativity. Now, every time I pick up the phone I’m further reminded to have the same fierce protectiveness for that little girl as I would for any other.

  To help ourselves truly understand that we are enough and to continue to build self-trust, we need to start thinking of ourselves as a friend7 and act accordingly.

  Part 1: The Way-Back Machine

  Close your eyes, and imagine that you go back in time to visit yourself as a child. Imagine yourself as a mentor who sees this child’s rich potential.

  What makes this child unique?

  What would you encourage this child to do?

  What advice and warnings would you give her/him?

  What would you tell the child if s/he beats up herself/himself over a “mistake” or “failed” at something?

  What message(s) do you know that the child desperately wants and needs to hear around her/his creative abilities, but doesn’t hear enough of?

  Tell this child everything you feel s/he needs to know to realize her/his greatness.

  Part 2: Present Advocate

  Close your eyes again, but this time, imagine yourself as your own best friend.

  You’re watching as your friend is being berated and bullied by a manager or a boss (it may help to imagine that the bully looks like the image of the Inner Critic that you drew and ripped up back in Chapter 2). If you knew you had absolutely nothing to lose, what would you say to the bully?

  Become a sworn defender – of yourself. Come to the defense of your friend and tell the bully exactly why the bullying is wrong, and why and how your friend is amazing, does great work, has fabulous ideas, and is an asset to the team and company.

  How do you talk to your friend afterward?

  What would you say to her/him to help process this incident?

  Part 3: Future-Trip

  Close your eyes a final time, but this time, imagine yourself at the end of your life, looking back at what you’ve created in this one and the legacy you are leaving.

  What do you feel are the experiences and accomplishments that have been the most important to you?

  What are you most proud of?

  What impact have you left on other people and the world?

  What kind of person can you say you have been and how was this reflected in your life?

  What do you want people to remember about you?

  What do you regret that you did not accomplish, create, develop, or experience?

  This is a great exercise for getting back in touch with what is really important to you and even with your soul’s desires.

  The good news is that you can use this information to start directing your life from this point on.

  Bonus Action: Write Yourself a Letter

  Another way we can be a friend is to write ourselves a compassionate letter.8 It may be helpful to bring to mind your Future Compassionate Self that you generated in Chapter 2, and imagine this version of yourself writing the letter, while you merely take dictation. Either way, the language and tone of the letter should be loving, comforting, and full of empathy and warmth for yourself and the distress generated by your self-doubt.

  The letter might be structured like this:

  “Dear Jim, I heard that you’ve been afraid that your work isn’t good enough and have been beating yourself up over it, which makes me sad. I want you to know that I trust in your abilities.”

  You can write this letter in your journal so that you can revisit it regularly.

  Or, you could even go so far as to email the letter to yourself by using a great service called FutureMe.org, where you can compose an email to yourself to be mailed to you at whatever date you choose in the future.

  Super Bonus Action: Make writing emails to yourself a self-kindness habit and regularly write and schedule emails for yourself!

  No matter which method you choose, writing self-compassionate letters or emails to yourself helps to undo your self-doubt and your Inner Critic.

  Learn, Expand, and Mix It Up

  “As we grow in awareness, our fear of loss, not having enough or being insufficient matures into love of giving, sharing and collaboration.”

  — Joseph Rain, author and entrepreneur

  Think back to a time when you were excited to learn something new. Your focus was on the experience of gaining knowledge and skill – and probably also on what you would be able to do with that knowledge in the future. Similarly, think back to a time when you were completely wrapped up in executing an idea that you had, and you were so excited about it that you completely got into flow, lost track of time, forgot to eat, and were completely enamoured with what you were creating.

  In either scenario, did doubt-ridden thoughts of whether it had been done before or better enter your consciousness? No, because the only thing that mattered to you at that moment was the experience of creating and seeing your concept come to fruition.

  In continuing our efforts to shift our focus to where it needs to be, the objective is to relinquish self-doubt so that we (re)learn to trust ourselves: our intelligence, skills, experience, knowledge, and originality, and cultivate methods through which we can joyfully expand all. When we do that, we can then put our efforts into using our knowledge, expertise, and creativity to help others.

  Here are two methods – quick learning and deliberate practice – that you can employ to learn information and build skill more quickly, while stimulating your creativity and potentially achieving flow as a bonus.

  Believe That You Can Be Informed and Able

  “They are able who think they are able.”

  — Virgil, classical Greek poet

  Futurist and inventor Buckminster Fuller developed the Knowledge Doubling Curve to describe the rate at which human knowledge has been increasing. According to the curve, until 1900, human knowledge doubled approximately every 100 years. By 1945, the rate changed to 25 years. At the present, the rate of knowledge doubling is estimated to be every 12 months.9 With the rate of change and innovation these days being so dramatic, your sense of not being able to keep up is arguably based in fact. But even without the rate of knowledge doubling, you simply can’t learn everything – so get that out of your head right now as an unnecessary point of frustration. Your ability to grow and expand your knowledge whenever you need it is completely independent of how much there is to know.

  You can shift into feeling confident about your capacity to learn by keeping these three things in mind:

  Trust in your intelligence and ability to learn. Studies have shown that believing in your own intellectual capacity actually improves it.10 Starting out with the conviction that you have the ability to understand a new subject or skill is almost half the battle.

  Be patient with yourself during the learning process. Remember at the beginning of the book when I talked about neuroplasticity? When we are learning, we are pushing our brain to create new neuron connections. We are quite literally forcing our brains to think differently than before.11

  Get clear about your motivation. Why do you want to learn the new knowledge or skill, and what do you want to achieve through learning it? The more you are motivated by positive outcomes, such as how the information will be useful for you and you believe it will have a positive impact
on your community, the easier and more enjoyable the entire process will be. But if you come from a place of fear and anxiety, not only do those feelings adversely color the learning experience, but they will actually stunt the process on a neurological level, as negative stress suppresses the brain’s ability to create new neural connections. Keep your positive outcomes in mind during the learning process.

  An additional benefit will come from your commitment to learning something new: the very process itself sparks creativity! Curiosity is a precursor of creativity; it is through curiosity that we stimulate and push our brains to take in information that gives our mind fodder for new associations.

  Know the Four Stages of Competence

  Before you set yourself to the task of learning anything, keep in mind the four stages of learning using the competence model of the stages of learning12 to help quiet your Inner Critic by mitigating frustration and helping you stay the course.

  Starting off, you’re in unconscious incompetence, where you don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t know how to perform a new skill or even when you are doing it incorrectly.

  The next stage of conscious incompetence is where you can see what you are doing incorrectly, you are very aware of gaps in knowledge and skill, and whatever you are learning feels awkward. You’ll also make a lot of mistakes. Beware: this is often the place where people get frustrated and abandon acquiring the new skill.

  Now you’ll move to conscious competence, where you understand the information or skill and have achieved a certain level of proficiency. However, executing the skill still requires concentration and conscious effort. Continuous practice is the key to building even higher proficiency at this stage.