Banish Your Inner Critic Read online

  Options

  Exercises with multiple options are those in which you have a choice: you can do the work of each option, or you can pick and choose among them. If you do choose to do all of the options, it’s not necessary to complete them in any particular order.

  Parts

  Exercises that have parts are substantive: each part could easily stand alone as an exercise by itself. Thus the parts of the exercise could be done independently from one another as separate exercises. Exercises with parts also usually require more time and thought.

  Bonus Action

  Some of the exercises have a “Bonus Action” which takes the exercises even further.

  Online Companions

  In several places in the book, there are links to download companion materials to the exercises online. These links are footnoted on the same page so that you can find them easily.

  Guidelines for Success

  This book is densely packed with a lot of information. It will probably take time to digest and assimilate all of it. To get the most out of the content and the process you’re about to embark upon, here are some tips for success.

  Choose Your Path

  The book is designed so that if you really want to get to the guise of the Inner Critic that affects you the most strongly and learn about the solutions for it, you can go directly to any particular chapter. In fact, there is a quiz in Chapter 2 that will help you identify your predominant Inner Critic guise so you will be able to do just that.

  However, I recommend that you read the book in order from the beginning to the end. The chapters are written in such a way that each one builds on content in the previous chapters. Chapters 1 through 4 in particular are best read in sequence, as it is in these chapters that I lay out the foundational concepts.

  Write It Out

  For the exercises in this book, I encourage you to actually write everything down by hand instead of on a computer. Writing things on paper actually has an impressive array of benefits that will help in your process. Writing activates more parts of the brain than typing does, focusing and engaging the brain to digest information and learn from it, while helping the brain to develop and grasp new ideas and concepts.1 While it strengthens the memory – it’s easier to remember things that you’ve written down – writing also triggers deeper parts of the emotional brain. So make an effort to write it out to work it out.

  Dude, Where’s the Writing Space?

  You may be thinking “Okay, I’m supposed to write it out, but there are no lines for it in the book!” There’s a reason for that.

  As much as I love reading self-help books, I’ve never been a fan of the lines provided for doing the exercises. Between you and me, I find them somewhat intimidating, or more accurately, accusatory. Why? They highlight the fact that I’m more interested in thinking through the exercises and finding out the next bit of information than writing my thoughts down. Additionally, due to my reverence for books, I abhor writing in them.

  Personally, I find lines confining. My preference is to write on blank paper, free of lines so that neither my ideas nor my thinking are constrained.

  So instead of providing space to write in the book, I recommend that you use the companion Banish Your Inner Critic Journal, or get a dedicated notebook of the variety that you like best, and use that to do the exercises in.

  Give Yourself Time to Process

  As a good friend of mine likes to say, in this book, we’re going to do deep. You’re probably going to hit some pockets of feelings and emotions that have not seen the light of day for some time. Make sure that after you’ve read the information and the exercises, you give yourself time to mull things over and see what comes up for you. There’s no need to rush this process. Your Inner Critic has been there for a long, long time. Give yourself adequate time to transform it.

  Last but not least, here is my creative counsel: final recommendations for getting the most out of this process.

  Set your intention to start the process of silencing your Inner Critic

  Understand that this is a long game — not a sprint.

  In place of only celebrating accomplishment, give yourself credit for effort. In other words, don’t wait to give yourself kudos until you have been able to do something “perfectly” or have arrived at some point of completion. Congratulate yourself on having started the process at all, and continue to congratulate yourself for sticking with it.

  Be kind to yourself. Now’s the time, you’ve beaten yourself up enough.

  Read and Revisit

  This book is only as powerful as your application of the concepts contained here. Don’t just read the book – really make an effort to put the foundational principles and exercises into practice. And bear in mind that sometimes we need to return to a book to really take full advantage of the teachings in it. As you change and develop, you will be ready for new information. Something that only partially resonated when you read it the first time may be exactly what you need for a breakthrough when you revisit it the second, third, or even fourth time.

  The Origin of the Inner Thoughts

  The inner thoughts at the beginning of each chapter are not fabricated. Rather, they are from attendees to my Banish Your Inner Critic keynote and creativity workshops from 2015 to 2016. I lead an exercise that I got from my friend and colleague Jessie Shternshus: I ask everyone to write down one fear that they have around creativity, crumple the paper into a ball, and then throw it across the room. Then I have everyone pick up a paper ball that lands near them and share what was written there out loud. I’ve gathered these “snowballs” to use as examples of actual fears gathered anonymously from professionals just like you. The “snowballs” come from attendees at conferences like Adobe Max: The Creativity Conference, HOW Interactive, the British Columbia Chapter of the American Marketing Association, MinneWebCon, UX Lisbon, UX Australia, Delight Conference and others.

  Disclaimers

  This book is not intended to be a substitute for the advice or care of a trained mental health professional, so readers should consult with one regarding any serious matters relating to your mental health or concerning serious mental health conditions. The information contained within this book is strictly for educational purposes. If you wish to apply these ideas, you are taking full responsibility for your choices, actions, and results.

  For the anecdotes at the beginning of the chapters, the names and identifying details have been altered or changed complete to protect the privacy of the individuals. Actual names and details were used only with each individual’s permission and blessing.

  Last but not least, know in advance that “earworms” – pieces of music that get stuck in your mind that are incredibly difficult to dislodge – may be caused by certain chapter, section, or subsection titles in this book. The only known antidote for a pervasive earworm is to replace it with another. I apologize in advance. If it makes you feel any better, I had the song “Emotions” by Samantha Sang and the Bee Gees running through my head the entire time I was writing Chapter 1 – and that subtitle didn’t even make the final cut.

  Chapter 1 | Why Banish the Inner Critic?

  This chapter examines:

  Creativity and Creative Flow

  Inner Critic Origins

  Creativity v. the Inner Critic

  The Need to Reclaim Creativity

  A Call to Action

  “What is this self inside us, this silent observer,

  Severe and speechless critic, who can terrorise us

  And urge us on to futile activity,

  And in the end, judge us still more severely

  For the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?”

  — T.S. Eliot, The Elder Statesman

  Our Intrinsic Creativity

  The idea first comes to you unbidden. A glimmer on the edge of your perception, it’s hazy, not fully formed, its edges
fuzzy and indistinct. “Where did that come from?” you wonder briefly. But once you put your full attention on the idea, the longer you focus, the more clear and distinct it becomes. You begin to feel a welling within: a push from your gut and a quickening of your heart.

  You have to capture it, this idea. You grab a piece of paper and jot down notes or do a quick sketch. Or maybe you record a quick voice memo on your phone. But the idea won’t leave you alone, and returns to you with increased insistence and clarity. Your brain starts to explode with related ideas as you start to connect the dots. Your imagination takes over, visualizing how to execute this concept that has stolen your attention.

  Nothing – no mental barrier of self-doubt or questioning – comes between you and your creative work. Nothing in you says “no” or

  “I don’t know.” Instead, everything in you says “yes” as you begin the process of making your idea manifest. And the more the details fall into place like puzzle pieces coming together, the more “yes” you feel. A rush of energy flows through you, compelling and motivating you to prioritize your brainchild. Interest, curiosity, and fascination take over.

  Hours fly by as you are engrossed in your project. In the midst of making, you feel clear, super-focused, and confident. Once you’ve finally acted upon your idea, you feel a sense of completion and satisfaction.

  While it is not the same for every single creative endeavor, this is the essence of the experience. Most people coming out of the throes of creating will tell you, face aglow and eyes still shining, that the experience, on the whole, was amazing. Regardless of whether you were designing an interface for an app, getting down ideas for your startup, writing a blog post, developing software, cooking a six-course gourmet dinner, or choreographing a performance – the process going on in your head and the sensations you were having were universal.

  In fact, in my keynotes and workshops, one of my favorite pieces of audience participation is when I ask the attendees about what creative flow feels like for them. The responses – regardless of the audience location or demographics – are remarkably similar. Here are the words that come up time and time again:

  Timeless • Connected • Happy • Good • Strong • Clear • Focused • Confident • Alive • Vibrant • Energized • Everything flows • Euphoric • Trance-like • Enjoyable • Empowered • Capable

  When we are creative, we are blissfully “in the zone,” engaged in soul-satisfying making and producing. In his book Creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the pioneering researcher who first identified the state of flow, says, “when we are involved in creativity, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.” Yes! Creativity makes us feel fully alive.

  Before you fall back on any limited ideas around what creativity is, allow me to dispel a few myths. You don’t have to be a visual artist, writer, or musician to be creative. You don’t have to be eccentric, neurotic, tortured, or starving. Creativity isn’t solely the domain of a group of “special” people whom you’ll never be a part of.

  We are born creative. Creativity is about seeing possibilities. It’s a spark, a stirring, an impetus: a powerful force that compels us to create and bring an idea to life.

  This power is in everybody. We all have the desire to create something out of nothing, be it a recipe, a poem, or a business. Creativity isn’t what you produce or the medium you use to produce it.

  What’s more, we each have our own unique form of creativity, so don’t be fooled into believing that just because what you are great at creating isn’t “art” that it’s not valid. In fact, if you are an engineer, scientist, or anyone else of an analytic bent, and you believe yourself to be in the category of “people who aren’t creative,” you’re wrong. Instead, you are one of the most creative and imaginative kinds of people on the planet.

  I’m here to tell you that you are creative. Yes, YOU.

  Creativity is the essence of our being and a part of our DNA. Indeed, neuroscience shows that we are literally wired for it.

  Your Brain on Creativity

  Everyone has the capacity to experience the “optimal state of consciousness where we both feel and perform our best.”1 One of the great paradoxes of creative flow, however, is that you can’t force it; you can only create the proper environment for accessing it. The conditions needed to get into a flow state are a confluence of uninterrupted time to concentrate, clear goals, the correct ratio of challenge to skill, and immediate feedback from our actions.2 Then the magic happens.

  Once we get into flow, time perception becomes altered. Hours seem like minutes, and/or minutes seem like hours. We feel a euphoric sense of control and personal power, but paradoxically lose our sense of self. Performance of all kinds is heightened tremendously – creative performance in particular. But it gets even better: the effects of flow go beyond the immediate moment. Harvard researcher Teresa Amabile discovered that people continue to feel creative the day after.3 I call this “the flow afterglow.” As we increasingly achieve creative flow, we train our brains to be even more creative.

  The good news is that if you don’t think of yourself as creative or trust your creativity, you can now relax. Being creative is built into the way our brains are designed to work. On a cellular level during the flow state, serotonin and dopamine, which are the pleasure-inducing brain chemicals or neurotransmitters, wash over our brains. Another neurotransmitter, endorphin, improves focus – helping to shut out distractions. This increases our ability to make new mental connections, further enhancing performance. Anandamide, a neurotransmitter whose name is derived from the Sanskrit word for bliss, enters the scene. In addition to encouraging the brain to practice lateral thinking4 and to release even more dopamine, anandamide helps generate pleasure and motivation

  Speaking of the brain, creativity does not happen because the “imaginative” right brain takes over the “analytical” left brain. In fact, scientists consider the concept of creativity being seated in the right side of the brain as archaic.5

  The most exciting finding about creativity in the brain is this: researchers now consider creativity to be based in the part of the brain responsible for planning, self-evaluation, and self-censorship.6 The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is where the majority of higher cognitive functions of working memory, mental imagery, and willed action (specifically self-monitoring and impulse control) lives. In other words, this is the part of the brain that interprets situations, envisions consequences, and then adapts behavior accordingly. Contrary to what you might think, the goal is not for this area to be active. Rather, creative magic happens when the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex powers down and stays quiet. Simply put, creativity comes from relaxing self-evaluation and self-judgment – and the self-criticism and self-doubt that result from them.

  Therein lies the rub.

  Creativity, Interrupted

  Children are terrific examples of unfettered creativity; they effortlessly create worlds with their imagination. As a child, you did this too. When we were younger, we trusted the creative spark that lives within us, and we easily played with ideas and let them out into the world. Imagination was our boon companion, and creativity, our best friend.

  Over time, our once close relationship with our creativity becomes strained. Instead of exercising our ability to bring forth something new and positive into the world, we begin to practice creativity’s evil twin, destructivity: using our imagination in ways that sabotage our creative efforts. Why? Because a new player crops up, wedging itself between us and our once best buddy of creativity. Posing as a sworn protector, this interloper begins to whisper doubts in our ear after every letdown, every unexpected criticism, and every perceived failure.

  Where we used to trust in the flow of inspiration and ideas from our creativity, we now begin to second-guess these messages through the filter of this new interpreter. We start to fall prey to the incessant internal critical voice that tells
us that we don’t know enough, that we might look stupid and be criticized, that our ideas aren’t original, that we aren’t working hard enough – and that we have to do, be, and produce more in order to be accepted. We fall victim to our anxiety that we’ll be found out as a fraud, that our work has to be executed perfectly to be recognized and valued, that we will fail at the challenges we take on, or that we can’t keep up with the skills and technologies that we need for our work. It’s no wonder we crack under the weight of the belief that we aren’t enough.

  What happened to the unselfconscious state of flowing creativity that we used to enter so easily? What happened to the life-in-Technicolor experiences that left us with a sense of wonder at what we produced and excitement at doing more in the future?

  My friend, your enjoyable creative process and access to your creative power have been usurped by internal critical thoughts rooted in old fears and mistaken beliefs. May I introduce to you: the Inner Critic.

  Meet the Inner Critic

  While we are born creative, we are not born self-critical. Strong self-reflection is necessary to help a child evaluate her or his behavior in order to make good choices. However, self-judgment and self-criticism replaces self-reflection, and it then grows unchecked during adolescence, through adulthood, and to the ends of our lives into a force that blocks us from reaching our creative potential. Excessive self-criticism can become the predominant influence in our lives, erecting obstructions to opportunities and holding us back from stepping into our creative greatness. What is this particular form of unchecked self-criticism? This psychological construct is known as the Inner Critic.