inner critic Archives - Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™

February 22, 2015

The “Why Do I Even Bother?” Gremlin, Spinner Dolphins, and the Point

One from the archives, originally published on 11/13/12. Given that “what’s the point?” is the number one reason I hear for creativity not having a bigger place in people’s lives, this one felt ripe for a revisit. Enjoy! xo,Melissa

Years ago, when I was still a fairly new calligrapher, a contingent from my south Bay Area calligraphy guild, Pacific Scribes, took a field trip to the San Francisco Public Library, where we were treated to a private viewing of several calligraphic treasures from the Harrison Collection.

(Richard Harrison was a local calligrapher, and a collector of calligraphy, who donated his entire collection to the library in 1963. The collection contains nearly 1,000 examples of modern calligraphy, including manuscripts, broadsides, handwritten books, fine prints, drawings and sketches.

Now anyone [Read more…]

September 8, 2012

Gremlins Overlooking the Ocean

I’m away from home as I write this, away from normal life, on the very left edge of the United States, perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

I’m at a 4-day writing and performing workshop with Ann Randolph, in a truly glorious house (where I plan to run my own creative workshops and retreats sometime in the not-too-distant future, btw), and it has been an amazing day-and-a-half so far.

A dozen of us spent three hours on Thursday night, three hours Friday morning, and three hours Friday afternoon, playing improv games, writing in mad bursts, and then reading what we wrote out loud for the group, all under Ann’s facile direction.

Why improv games? Not everyone here is interested in performing, but the improv games are potent tools for everyone: they get us moving and playing — into our bodies and out of our heads.

It’s amazing what flows out in your writing when you get out of your head and into your body first.

Can’t think of what to write? Ann always offers a plethora of prompts, and if you ever draw a blank, Ann instructs to simply write “what’s next, what’s next, what’s next” until a new idea comes.

It always does.

There’s no editing in these writing sessions. This is stream-of-consciousness, folks. And yet some of the readings astound me in their cohesiveness, clarity and just plain brilliance.

“Wow, YOU can’t write like that!” the Inner Critic Gremlin taunts me. “They’re all so much better than you are!”

“You’re right, I can’t write like anyone here,” I acknowledge. “I can only write like me.”

“Which sucks,” the Gremlin pipes in.

I know better than to get into an argument with my Gremlin — Inner Critic Gremlins love arguing, and it’s an argument I will never win.

But thankfully, I also know that my Inner Critic Gremlin is full of shit. (To put it bluntly.)

Even when part of me believes that maybe my Inner Critic Gremlin is right, the fact that I’ve unmasked it as the Gremlin robs it of its power. Although it tries to convince me that its voice is actually the Voice of Truth, I know my Inner Critic Gremlin is lying.

I’ve learned the trick of discerning when my Gremlin is doing the talking, and though I may not be able to shut it up, I have learned to persevere regardless, which is the important thing.

“I see you, Gremlin. I know that’s you,” I say. “I appreciate your concern, but I’ve got this one covered.”

Sometimes my Inner Critic Gremlin throws a bit of a tantrum at this point, but just like throwing water on the Wicked Witch of the West melted her away, unmasking the Inner Critic Gremlin shrinks it from 8 feet tall to about 2 inches. Small enough for me to put it in my pocket. Or flick it off the balcony into the Pacific Ocean.

Don’t worry — lest you’re concerned for my the little bugger, it never gets hurt in the process. Inner Critic Gremlins are hardy, resilient creatures, and always come back in full regalia. Maybe not the same day, but just you wait — it’ll be back.

Which is why it is so critical to learn to manage the damn thing.

An untamed Inner Critic Gremlin is like an untrained German Shepherd: it’ll jump on you, knock you down, run around and chew up the furniture, and poop all over your stuff.

But just like the wild German Shepherd, the Inner Critic Gremlin has good (if misguided) intentions. It may be hard to believe when you’re on the receiving end of its jabber, but it’s only trying to help.

And just like with the German Shepherd, the answer isn’t to kill it, or try to stuff it in a closet, but to train it.

And just like with dogs of all breeds, 99% of the training is actually training the person.

Sure, you need to teach your dog what you want it to do, but if you don’t stay consistent with your demands and limits, all the money you spend on training is going down the tubes.

And well, okay, maybe it’s really 50/50 person/dog, and since the Inner Critic Gremlin is your own voice of self-doubt and self-criticism, it’s really 100/0 person/Gremlin, but hopefully you get my point.

My point being that you can learn to manage that Inner Critic Gremlin of yours.

And since it is not going to ever completely leave you alone, don’t you want to learn whatever techniques you can in order to bring it to heel?

I’ve learned a lot of tools for taming that pesky little monster, and I’m sharing all of them in my upcoming Gremlin Training Lab on September 18.

Because I believe that getting the voice of self-criticism and self-doubt under control is absolutely core to living the fully creative life that is your birthright. If the Gremlin has you cowed, there’s no way you’ll make what is calling you to be created. And if you somehow do manage to create, there’s no way you’ll ever share your creation with the world.

You’ll stay stuck, and quiet, and blocked, your creative spirit locked away in a closet, because the Inner Critic Gremlin convinced you that everyone else’s work is better than yours, so why bother?

Or that your ideas are lame.

Or that they’ve already been done, better than you could possibly do them (so you might as well give up).

Or that you have no talent (and who do you think you’re fooling, anyway?)

Or that you’ll never be able to accomplish your dream (and who do you think you are to have such big dreams?)

And in this world that so desperately needs — is so hungry for — each and every totally unique, creative output from each and every one of us, believing the lies of your Inner Critic Gremlin would be a shame.

So let’s bring those pesky little critters to heel, shall we?

Watch for an announcement this week of how to get in on my Gremlin Training Lab on September 19. And sign up on my mailing list to get early-bird pricing.

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Photo credit: fergie_lancealot at Flickr

August 9, 2012

Telling the Inner Critic Gremlin to Suck It

That damn Inner Critic Gremlin is a sneaky beast.

Not only is it a bald-faced liar, but it is a master of disguise. Some of its favorite disguises include:

The Voice of Truth

The Voice of Reason

The Voice of Rationality

When four hours of free studio time landed in my lap late last year, I didn’t let my Inner Critic Gremlin stop me from taking advantage of it and recording 7 original tracks of me and my ukulele.

I didn’t even let my Inner Critic Gremlin stop me from getting the tracks mixed and mastered.

But then my Inner Critic Gremlin, disguised as the Voice of Rationality, convinced me that I needed to hold off on releasing my music into the world.

The Inner Critic Gremlin speaks

“You should wait until you can put your songs out with more instrumentation than just you and your ukulele,” it said. “People will be bored by just you and your ukulele.”

“And,” it continued, “if you’re going to go through the trouble of adding more instrumentation, you really should wait until you have a full CD of 12 or 15 songs. And really, you need to find a producer to collaborate with on the arrangements. And since a producer/collaborator and more musicians means more expense, that means you’ll need to run a Kickstarter or IndieGogo campaign to fund it.”

It all sounded so… rational!

The thing was I didn’t have time or energy or “bandwidth” to deal with finding a producer/collaborator or running a fundraising campaign. Which meant putting my music out into the world would just have to wait.

I speak back…

But wait, I thought. These stripped-down tracks are the perfect thing for my vision of a UkeDiva.com website, with tutorials of all of my ukulele songs! Maybe I ought to just release them as-is…

To which the voice that I thought was the Voice of Rationality replied:

“Ah, yes, it’s a great idea to make these tracks part of your UkeDiva.com ukulele-tutorial-website vision… but really, you should wait to release the songs until the website is built….”

And of course, I didn’t have time or energy or “bandwidth” to create my dreamed-of UkeDiva.com website, either (that one’s been off the stovetop for over a year, relegated to the fridge for now). Which meant, once more, that putting my music out into the world would have to wait.

This went on for eight months!

That’s how long it took me to recognize that what I thought was the Voice of Rationality was really that sneaky rascal, the Inner Critic Gremlin. So that’s how long my Inner Critic Gremlin was dictating the fate of my music album!

The Inner Critic Gremlin Unmasked!

The thing about the Inner Critic Gremlin is that once you’ve seen through its disguise, it’s much easier to roll your eyes at it, kick it out of the proverbial driver’s seat and grab the wheel again yourself.

Aha, thought I, all of these reasons for not putting my music out into the world are really not rational at all!

Hunh!

I had a little talk with my Inner Critic Gremlin. Then I sent it off to get a pedicure while I uploaded my music to my music website, melissasings.com, where you can find it now (and where hundreds of people have already listened and/or downloaded — it’s “name your own price,” guys!).

Yes, the Inner Critic Gremlin had possession of the driver’s seat for 8+ months, but I unmasked it in the end. The sales I’ve made, and the emails and tweets that I’ve received from appreciative fans have touched my heart, and motivated me to record more music and get it out into the world!

Comments like:

Oh!! “My Ukelele” gives me goosebumps!! VERY 100% FAB!!!! Yay Melissa!!! 😀

and tweets like:

@a_creative_life Uke Diva, you made my day! Loved the stripped-bareness of it. Uke playing notwithstanding, the "horn" playing is divine.
— Jody MacDonald (@jody_macdonald) August 8, 2012

Ha! Take THAT, Inner Critic Gremlin!

In short, for this round, at least: Melissa – 1, Inner Critic Gremlin – 0

Where have you unmasked your Inner Critic Gremlin lately?

xo, Melissa <3

Hey! Want some Gremlin Training Techniques?

I’m so glad I’ve learned special Gremlin Training Techniques to adequately deal with Inner Critic Gremlins (even though sometimes it still takes me awhile to recognize mine!).

Gremlin training is an ongoing process, because as long as we keep pushing outside our comfort zone, those Inner Critic Gremlins will keep popping up.

Thankfully, I’ve got a slew of really useful tools, and will be teaching a 90-minute Gremlin Training Lab in the not-too-distant future. Sign up for my insiders newsletter to make sure you get notified when I offer the class!

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

March 26, 2012

We Have Met the Gremlin and She Is Us

One of my favorite parts of Tara Mohr’s Playing Big program* so far is the notion of the Inner Critic.

If that name alone didn’t bring up a clear picture for you, let me flesh it out a bit.

It may manifest as the voice that tells you “you’re not good enough,” or “you’re not ready for this.”

Or the voice of “who are YOU to think you could do that?”

Or the voice of “THEY are so much better than you; you might as well just give up.”

Basically any self-doubt message that keeps you stuck — that’s what Tara would call the Inner Critic.

Havi calls these voices monsters (her Monster Manual* is the niftiest guide I know for learning how to talk to those monsters). I’ve taken to thinking of mine as gremlins (which somehow seem smaller and less threatening to me than monsters, but that’s just me).

Hence my Inner Critic Gremlin.

We all have these critical voices. In fact, they’re wired into us as human beings. (That’s right — if you were thinking you were alone in having gremlins/monsters/an Inner Critic, you are very much not alone.)

Way back in human pre-history, trying something new, making yourself visible — say, by standing alone out on the velt — had a good chance of getting you eaten. Our brains evolved to keep us safe, to avoid anything that might make us likely to become a saber-toothed tiger snack (and hence not pass on our genes to the next generation). And even though the threats we deal with now are NOT saber-toothed tigers, to our primitive lizard brains, they might as well be, because it can seem just that scary.

The problem, of course, is that the kind of thoughts that evolved to keep us safe and alive can also keep us stuck and playing small.

Making a painting, or writing a play, or speaking in public are actually not likely to get us eaten, but the lizard brain doesn’t know this. All the lizard brain knows is “new=scary” and “standing out=dangerous” and “playing big=NO FREAKIN’ WAY!”

With the best of intentions, the lizard brain tries to keep us safe by speaking in the voice of the Inner Critic Gremlin (or monster, or whatever you want to call it). And that leads to NOT following the dreams of our hearts, which in turn leads to a lot of unhappiness and frustration when we live lives of of settling, instead of going after the lives we really, really want.

What to do?

Thanks to Tara and Havi, along with a bunch of other resources and teachers (combined with a lot of self-work), I now know 7 ways to recognize my Inner Critic Gremlin.

I know how to distinguish my Inner Critic Gremlin from realistic thinking.

I know over a dozen different specific tactics for talking to my Inner Critic Gremlin.

And most important of all, I’m practicing hearing my Inner Critic Gremlin’s voice without taking direction from it.

(This is important, because I hate to tell you this, but that voice is NOT EVER going to go away. In fact, the bigger you play, the louder the Inner Critic Gremlin tends to get.)

I say I’m practicing hearing my Inner Critic Gremlin’s voice without taking direction from it, because this stuff takes practice. The Inner Critic Gremlin can be very subtle and very sneaky.

Here’s a recent example:

I managed to sneak by my Inner Critic Gremlin and write my upcoming 19,000-word ebook, Creating Happiness: 9 Essential Secrets for Creative People ([subtitle currently in process]). But when my publisher, Tanner at Aspindle, asked if I’d like to design the cover, possibly incorporating some of my artwork, my first thoughts were “Me? Design the cover for a book that I want to stand out on the virtual shelves of the Amazon Kindle store? Are you kidding? There’s no WAY I’m up to that task!”

and

“I’m not a Graphic Designer!”

and

“My art isn’t nearly graphic and ‘poppy’ enough to do a good job.”

and

“I’m not good enough to do a good job!”

In other words, classic Inner Critic Gremlin stuff. Textbook.

And yet I didn’t recognize it as the Inner Critic Gremlin at all! As far as I was concerned, these thoughts were nothing more or less than The Truth.

Which is, as you may have guessed, one of the Inner Critic Gremlin’s sneakiest tricks: to masquerade as The Truth.

The Power of Mirrors

Thankfully, the story didn’t end there. When I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the mockups that my publisher came up with, I did decide to try my own hand at some designs. But did I pull out some of my artwork, or sit down to use my hard-earned skills as a calligrapher and hand-letter a title?

NO.

I still didn’t give credence to the possibility that my own artwork might be up to the task. Somehow, I had it in my head that my book cover had to have a certain slick, modern look, which (I reasoned) only a professional photo could provide.

So yes, I cranked out a handful of cover mockups… which all used stock photography, and ended up looking so generic and bland that none of my personality shone through at all.

I had a vague sense that none of them was quite “it” yet, but it wasn’t until I sent an email polling my wonderful audience of subscribers for their opinions that I finally woke up. I thought I would just get some help picking which one of the covers to use. What I ended up getting was a kick in the pants, right when I needed it most.

“Your covers need more love!” said one email in reply.

“I think your art speaks volumes…why wouldn’t you put your own work on the cover?” said another.

“I wish you would have been able to incorporate some of your personal art into the design.” said yet another.

And another: “You have such insight and wit, and I think the book cover should show it… I don’t think any of these covers do you justice.”

Snap!

My subscribers mirrored back to me what I already knew myself, and suddenly I saw, clear as day, that what I’d believed to be “The Truth” was nothing but the voice of my Inner Critic Gremlin, trying to keep me small and safe.

What I Learned

Not only did this exercise teach me a lot about how very sneaky my Inner Critic Gremlin can be, but I learned some other valuable lessons as well:

My peeps are not just generous, thoughtful and super-smart, they also really believe in what I’m doing and want to see me succeed. (This is, of course, what anyone building an audience is going for, but validation is always a wonderful thing.)

If you’re creating something you hope will make a difference in the world, getting feedback in advance from the people you’re hoping to impact is a really good thing (because you can then make new iterations that will be even better), and is ultimately less scary than avoiding potential criticism altogether until after your thing is born (when it’s too late to make improvements or changes).

In the case of my cover design, I got feedback from a slew of folks (a sort of mini-version of “crowdsourcing”). In the case of the book itself, I’ve been working with an editor. (Note: This is not the same as “designing by committee,” which is notorious for resulting in crap. The creator needs to hold onto her Big Vision during the iterative process. Not always an easy line to walk. And a big enough topic to be worthy of its own blog post [or several].)

Now when Creating Happiness finally actually comes out, I won’t be pushing it off a ledge into the utter unknown. This doesn’t mean that everyone will like either the cover or the content. You can’t please everyone, regardless of what you do. But at least I’ll know that the cover rings more true of ME for the people on my list (and me!) than it would have otherwise, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Meanwhile, one of my supremely talented subscribers offered his services to help me design a better cover, which has led, quite serendipitously, to a very exciting collaboration, and a new direction for a cover design which uses my artwork, and which I’m actually excited about!

You never know what good things will result from putting yourself out there.

Now I’m off to work on the artwork for that new design… (Want to be the first to see it, and possibly to weigh in with a vote of your own? Be sure to subscribe to the blog if you haven’t already!)

Where have you taken direction from your own Inner Critic Gremlin?

xo, Melissa <3
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

*And yes, those asterisked links are affiliate links, in case you’re wondering, and (sarcasm alert!) could potentially send gobs and gobs of money my way, no doubt enough to pay off all my debt, remodel my kitchen and replace my windows. Though the Playing Big program is currently closed, so all you’ll find there is a sign-up form. Which I think will pay me a commission if you sign up and later buy the program. Though I’m not 100% sure about that. Just sayin’.

Photo by cwasteson at Flickr