Banish Your Inner Critic

by Denise Jacobs

  Swap out new words for old ones to break out of Imposition Mentality.In place of “I have to”, use “I choose to” or “ I get to” or “I want to.”

  In place of “I must (x)”, reframe it by saying “When can I (x)?”.

  More power phrases to employ: “I will” and “I decide.”

  These self-statements turn those who are paralyzed by the Overwhelm Obstruction into more active producers.

  Part 2: Reframe

  Take a look at where you feel like you “have to do” something. Reframe this sentiment by making a list of all of the ways that are you privileged to be able to do it.

  For example:

  Are you on deadline because you “have to” put together a presentation for your manager? Think back to how happy you were when you first got the job and how fortunate you felt to do the work.

  Do you “have to” write an article for an online publication? Think about how your words will potentially help people and how the article may also boost your exposure.

  Here’s a framework for your reframes:

  I’m privileged _____________because

  _________________________________________________.

  I’m grateful to be able to ______________________________because

  _________________________________________________.

  I choose to ______________________ because _______________________.

  For more suggestions on reframing, go back to the Creative Dose: Focus on the Work in Chapter 3.

  With practice, you’ll find that becoming grateful for the opportunity to do something changes the energy around it dramatically.

  Reclaim Time, Create Mental Space

  In our age of distraction and overwhelm, it’s all too easy to forget that time is a mental construct, and what our brains are actually keeping track of is where we put our attention. If you have simply too much going on to be creative, then you need to shift attention, especially as the management of attention is one of our main means of reclaiming our creative power. This means readjusting priorities.

  What does this look like? Trying not to “do all of the things,” asking for help, and (gasp) relinquishing control. Don’t worry, this process can be a lot more satisfying and enjoyable than you think.

  Creative Dose: To Don’t List

  Purpose: To free up time and mental energy to do more of what you love

  You can free up time by writing a To-Don’t List — a list of things that you have decided you will no longer do, and therefore no longer devote attention to.

  To create your first To-Don’t List, you need to write down 3-4 items that you commit to stop doing within the next 30 days. Pro-tip: four is a great number to shoot for, so you have one time to focus on one for each week in the month.

  Which tasks are candidates?

  If a task is so onerous and/or repugnant that you can’t reframe it no matter how hard you try, that’s a great place to start.

  If there is something that you feel that you have to do, but really don’t enjoy, that is a candidate as well.

  If it is a task that is neutral, but takes up time you’d rather spend on something else, that’s a good one too.

  All of these tasks will go on your list and you will figure out how to Delegate, Alt(er), or Delete them.

  Delegate

  Maybe the task can be delegated. You can find someone else to do it. For example, maybe there is someone else on your team who is really good at proofreading. Or, you break down the numbers and find that hiring a housekeeper is more affordable than you think. Outsourcing can save a lot of headaches and time!

  Alt(er)

  Maybe the item can be alt(ered). Do you really have to balance your bank account by hand like you’ve done for years, or can you sign up for a service like Mint.com and reconcile items online or on your phone as you make purchases?

  Delete

  Finally, the item could just be something the you delete. You just stop doing it and thinking about it completely. For example, if you’re not a drinker and you’d really rather head directly home after work, then bow out of going to Happy Hour with your co-workers.

  Now that you’ve determined which tasks go on the To-Don’t list, how will you either Delegate, Alt(er), or Delete them?

  Here comes the fun part: ask a friend to kick around ideas on how you can eliminate each item from your life by either delegating/outsourcing the tasks or stopping them.

  Date your list, and over the next month, start putting your solutions in place.

  At the end of the month, review your list and ask yourself these questions:

  Where have you decided that being in control was no longer important and delegated?

  How and where have you asked for help?

  How many tasks have you let go of completely?

  Figure out what you need to continue to stop doing, and create another list for the upcoming month.

  Take your newly reclaimed time and devote it toward a creative project — particularly one that you keep pushing off because you “don’t have enough time.” Keep this practice up for six months to a year and see how it changes both your time and the quality of your creative life.

  Hack Your Body-Mind

  “Our bodies change our minds, our minds change our behavior, and our behavior changes our outcomes.”

  – Amy Cuddy, “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are” TED talk

  In the absence of the Inner Critic, self-judgment, self-criticism and self-doubt are replaced by self-confidence, which is one of the strongest contributors to higher levels of creative expression at work and elsewhere. Self-confidence can be seen as trusting oneself and not having the need to prove oneself to others. When we already feel like we are okay, on top of things, and succeeding, we are less susceptible to the inner critical voice. One study conducted at the University of California showed that Ivy League students set up to fail a test, but pre-prepped with affirmations about feeling proud and confident, had a better sense of their self-worth afterwards.9 People who are self-confident have less fear around generating their ideas, which allows them to generate a greater number of creative ideas.10

  But self-confidence and the Inner Critic are not just a product of what’s going on in your head. It’s easy to forget that we are comprised of both the mind and the body, which are inextricably linked. Our minds are not solely contained within the confines of our craniums. Indeed, body movement can affect how we take in information, process it, and learn, and takes an active role in our thinking processes. And as we learned earlier with the power of gestures, the motion of our bodies helps to facilitate mental problem-solving.11

  Thus, we can leverage this strong mind-body connection to have our bodies control our brains, and correspondingly, our thoughts. Using the knowledge, wisdom, and processing power of our body-mind as a whole, we can replace our habit of lacking creative self-confidence and consequently distrusting our ability to generate ideas.

  In a TED talk by Harvard Business School faculty and social psychologist Amy Cuddy entitled “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are,”12 Cuddy shares her research on how the body and mind are connected, and how the nonverbal signals of body language accurately communicate how a person is feeling, even if they aren’t conscious of it. While people lacking confidence slump, hunch over, or cross their legs and arms; confident people stand up straight with their chests out or place their hands on their hips. When feeling a sense of triumph, or “fiero” – the rush that you feel when you have succeeded over adversity, taken from the Italian word for “pride” 13 – people universally thrust both arms in air over their heads in the shape of a “V.”14

  In order to trick our minds into feeling confident, Cuddy suggests reverse-engineering confident people’s body language. The key is in physically “opening up” and taking up as much space as you can. In doin
g this “power pose” and mimicking the stance of physical power, we can actually make ourselves feel powerful as a result.

  Employ the power pose when you need an extra boost of confidence. It’s a great exercise to do before meetings, presentations, and even dates (who doesn’t need to feel empowered for that?!). By using this tool, you’ll give yourself the opportunity to use your behavior to change the outcome for the better.

  Creative Dose: Cop a Power Pose

  Purpose: To empower yourself by physically generating a sense of capability

  If your Inner Critic is being particularly vociferous, causing you to be highly self-critical while you are in the midst of doing creative work, then you can fend off the lies with a power pose. This exercise is adapted from Amy Cuddy’s TED talk.15

  Stand up. Assume a pose that embodies your Inner Critic telling you that you can’t do it, it will never work, that you suck, your work is crap, that you’re no good, and that your ideas are lame and you can’t come up with any more. Really take on the stance of being critical and judgmental.

  When you’ve channeled your Inner Critic to the max, shake it off and move yourself to where your Attacked Self was on the receiving end. To reject the negative message of your Inner Critic, have your Creative Self step in and STRIKE A POWER POSE! Stand with your arms on your hips, arms in the air in triumph, or imagine flying with a cape behind you.

  It is you as your super Creative Self throwing off all of the inaccurate messages of the Inner Critic. Channel your favorite superhero or badass: think Wonder Woman, Superman, Xena the Warrior Princess, Deadpool, Luke Cage, or Daenerys of Targaryen (and if you want to envision a protective dragon behind you to complete the vision, go right ahead). The Inner Critic will not be able to withstand the force of its negativity coming back to it, and it will beat a hasty retreat.

  Now that you’ve successfully repelled the Inner Critic, imagine yourself as the superhero of your Creative Self looking off into the distance seeing your destiny of major creative butt-kicking.

  Make an effort to hold the power pose for as long as you can – Cuddy suggests that you need to remain in a power pose position for 2 minutes to really feel the change. This amount of time allows your body to communicate back to the brain that it is safe and can therefore feel empowered, raising testosterone levels and lowering levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.16

  Two minutes may be more than you have, however. If two minutes seems like an eternity, then shoot for 30 seconds.

  Are you feeling a little more “fiero” now than you did before you did your power pose? Now go forth and kick some creative butt!

  Dispel Creativity Misgivings

  “Creativity isn’t about talent, it’s a way of operating.”

  — John Cleese, Actor

  With the mystique that still surrounds creativity and creative inspiration, it’s easy to see where a kind of distrust develops. The fear that creativity and inspiration will run out and become a thing of the past, leaving us in the creative lurch, is perpetuated by the stereotype of the tortured artist whose muse has abandoned them.

  However, having more creativity is about actually exercising creativity. The more you use your capacity to be creative, the stronger it gets and the easier it is to keep using it. The fact is this: creativity is a skill that is more like a muscle, and needs active regular training. Getting into the habit of being creative, then, is more like the training that athletes do. Yes, it’s the irony of all ironies: creativity takes intention, practice, and discipline.

  Instead of living in constant fear that your muse will decide to take a permanent vacation on Bora Bora and that your creativity will dry up like the Sahara, you need to know for a fact that you can make it rain both inspiration and ideas. We’ll do this by beginning to practice some of the art of disciplined creativity to cultivate strong creativity habits.

  Intend Inspiration

  “Being creative is not so much the desire to do something as the listening to that which wants to be done....”

  — Anni Albers, textile artist and printmaker

  Like a favorite flamboyant aunt with a big personality, inspiration can feel like an unpredictable force of nature that sashays into your mental home unannounced, demanding all of your immediate attention and a glass of dry sherry. However, I believe that inspiration can be more like a loyal companion who, with regular attention and intention, can be encouraged to show up when wanted and needed. I’ll share a story to demonstrate.

  One thing that I am particularly proud of is my great parking karma. I find a parking space about 95% of the time. But I will let you in on a little secret: I’m convinced that the reason I find the spaces is because I genuinely believe that they will be there. When I get near my destination, I announce out loud, “I am finding a great parking space!” Because I already believe the space to exist, my job is merely to find it, and most often, I do.

  It’s using some of the forms of cognitive bias – specifically, a combination of selective attention and confirmation bias – for a positive and helpful outcome.

  Leveraging our natural tendency towards cognitive bias, we can find creative inspiration using the same mindset and approach that I use to find a parking space to generate similar results.

  Creative Dose: Inspiration-Hunting

  Purpose: To discover that inspiration is all around you at all times

  When feeling stuck for ideas, activate your cognitive biases and know that inspiration is out there waiting for you to find it.

  Option 1: Intend Inspiration

  Leave where you are and go walking for 10-20 minutes with the conviction that a source of inspiration is waiting for you, and you just have to find it.

  Keep in mind that even mundane locations that you go to all of the time can hold inspiration, like the grocery store or your favorite coffeehouse.

  While walking, open your fields of perception (visual, auditory, smell, touch, taste, and even emotions), and see what sparks your interest.

  What did you find? Capture what was sparked in your journal:

  Inspiration Spark 1: .

  Inspiration Spark 2: .

  Inspiration Spark 3: .

  I’m fairly certain that confirmation bias was on your side and that by expecting to find something, you did. Use this trick whenever you feel you lack creative inspiration.

  Option 2: Tune in to Your Subconscious Radio

  Another technique is this:

  Tell your brain that you are open to whatever ideas it has.

  Then, go take a walk and see what songs pop into your head.

  Take the lyrics, meaning, or feel of the song as a message from your subconscious about what to focus on creatively.

  What songs came up? What lyrics stood out for you? How can you use them to inform your creative process?

  Capture what came up in your journal.

  Become an Idea Machine

  If you are afraid that you’ll run out of ideas, then the obvious solution is to come up with a lot of them regularly. Serial entrepreneur James Altucher calls this regular practice to keep the idea muscle of your brain from atrophying “idea therapy.” Don’t let your brain get flabby – exercise your “idea muscle.”

  Creative Dose: 10 Ideas a Day

  Purpose: To train the idea muscle of your brain

  This exercise has been adapted from the recommendations in James Altucher’s article “The Ultimate Guide to Becoming an Idea Machine”17 and the exercise “The World’s Worst Ideas” by Jessie Shternshus, author of CTRL+Shift: 50 Games for 50 **** Days Like Today.18

  Keep a small notebook and write down 10 ideas a day. Don’t know where to start? Here are some prompts to help you focus and generate your ideas more easily:

  Make “bug lists”: things that bug you.19 Every annoyance, every point of friction, everything that rubs you the wrong way hides
an opportunity to apply creativity!

  Have your 10 ideas go along the lines of a theme, such as 10 blog posts you would write, 10 movies that would be fun to spoof, or 10 things I’d like to build by hand, or 10 businesses that would be fun to create.

  You could generate your ideas based on areas of interest, such as transportation, appliances, or devices.

  Generate your ideas by trying to make them as silly, unrealistic, crazy or absurd as possible.

  Channel the spirit of your favorite thinker and innovator and generate ideas like George Washington Carver, Buckminster Fuller, Nikola Tesla, or Marie Curie would.

  Do a mash-up: take two seemingly completely unrelated areas and generate ideas from their point of confluence. What do eco-tourism and vitamins have to do with each other? Go!

  If you need to, go for the absolute worst ideas that you can think of.

  The point is to generate your 10 ideas every day and to capture them. Struggling to get past idea 6 or 7? Then push yourself to come up with 20 ideas to push past self-censoring.

  Remember that your ideas do not have to be amazing, unique, or wildly creative. As a matter of fact, deliberately don’t strive to make them perfect or good.

  Will they be good ideas? Maybe. Will they be bad ideas? Possibly. Will you build a habit of using your brain and start proving to yourself that you can indeed come up with ideas? Most definitely.

  About this process, Altucher says this: “Practice doesn’t make perfect. But practice does make permanent.”20 And building a new habit to break the cycle of Creativity Denial and specifically Creativity Misgivings is precisely what we are shooting for.