inner critic gremlin Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™

April 1, 2012

Trickster Universe and the Truth About Being Enough

In honor of April Fool’s Day, a post about Trickster Universe that’s no joke.

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The Universe can be a real trickster.

Sometimes this comes in the form of whacking you upside the head with a 2×4 when you haven’t listened well enough to the whispers (and later louder statements, then shouts) it’s been telling you.

Other times there’s no 2×4, just the same message over and over in different forms and from different messengers.

We call this serendipity.

This past week has been a brilliant example of this (much more fun) side of the Trickster Universe.

One of my three words for 2012 is Self-Compassion. One way I’ve been practicing self-compassion is by making an effort to take care of myself physically. Like sleeping in til after noon on Friday to try and nip my cold in the bud. (Which made a huge difference, by the way.)

Being the gogogoGOGO sort (my top Strengthsfinder 2.0 strength is Achiever, so I come by it honestly), learning to slow down and take a nap is not easy for me.

Way harder, though, is the self-compassion to accept myself as enough, just as I am.

Turns out I’m not alone.

Brené Brown’s book, The Gifts of Imperfection, and her viral TED videos on shame and vulnerability, have made me much more aware of something I kinda already knew: we all feel like we’re not enough.

Something must have opened for me recently, though, because this week the Universe showed me, for the umpteenth time, that who I am, what I bring, really is enough, is good, is of benefit to others.

Yes, the Universe has tried to tell me this many times before. The difference is that this week I finally started to get it.

Here’s just some of what happened:

The Message of the EBook Cover

I wrote earlier about how my wonderful subscribers helped me see that my belief that my art couldn’t possibly make a good-enough ebook cover was a just my Inner Critic Gremlin talking. With their encouragement, and brilliant art direction from Seth Watkins, I threw out bland and generic, and went back to my drawing board. I worked through the hard, and found the real.

—————————————————————–

VERY LONG TANGENT!

Here’s a bit of the progression, in case you’re interested.

My publisher’s suggested design:

Lovely, but a young white woman on the cover felt to me like it might inadvertently make anyone who isn’t a young white woman feel like the book isn’t aimed at her.

So I decided to try my hand at some designs of my own. Still, the Inner Critic Gremlin had me convinced my own art wouldn’t work well. Stock photos — that was the way to do it right (I thought). These are what I cam up with:

Again, basically inoffensive, but still (except for the sticky notes design) implying a limited audience, whether by race, gender or age. And though I do find that happy toes image delightful, it doesn’t really fully express me and my message.

When your fans and followers ask you why your art isn’t on the cover, it becomes easier to unmask the Inner Critic Gremlin for the liar it is.

Back to the drawing board…

That’s when the brilliant and talented Seth got involved. Here are some of the images I sent him, this time using my own artwork (but still not “it” yet…):

Seth, that clever monkey, sent me a PDF paste-up of covers from a multitude of creativity-themed books, which helped me see what I like (rainbow colors, a “handmade” look). And he also included some art and graphics from my own site, which helped me see that, contrary to what I believed, I did have some very graphic art in my catalog! Namely this piece:

Aha! Back to Photoshop I went, where I created this mockup, combining my artwork above and rainbow colors (the handmade look I would do later at my actual drawing board — this is just a concept sketch):

Closer! We’re getting closer! And when I sent this to Seth, and he sent back this modification:

Eureka! He took my concept and made it exponentially more interesting! I knew we had it!

I then pulled out my calligraphy pens, watercolor paper and a cheap, Prang watercolor set and got to work. I scanned the resulting artwork into Photoshop, and (after much tweaking) this was the happy result:

Much better, no? So much more ME! Read my Facebook page and profile for some of the responses that validated what I felt.

Now back to our blog post already in progress…

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Message from the Universe: your art, your unique expression, Melissa, is good enough. Is, in fact, better at expressing the unique message of your own writing than any generic stock photo design that you, or anyone else, could brew up.

(AND, a good art director can take what you already do well and make it waaaaaay better.)

Bonus Message: What your Right People want from you is what YOU naturally bring to the table.

The Message of the Group Coaching Call

My partner, Cory, was out of town on a well-deserved vacation, leaving me on my own to run our monthly group coaching call for our online course and community for artists, ArtEmpowers.Me. Surely people would feel cheated not to have his technical wizardry and marketing expertise on the call! Yes, I bring my own expertise, but my expertise is not his expertise, and he brings so much to these calls, I thought for sure a call led just by me would be a massive disappointment.

What happened instead was that the call serendipitously seemed to draw people with mindset-related questions (my genius zone), and I facilitated what turned into a really interesting, more philosophical, more mindset-than-marketing kind of discussion.

Which the people on the call really loved. (One even said it was the best call yet.)

Message from the Universe: What you naturally bring to the table is actually enough.

The Message of the Online Class

My other partner project, Playing Around Online, had its 3rd class meeting the following morning. My co-teacher and fellow Poobah of Play, Kelly Hevel, allowed the energy of the class to determine the class plan, veering from our intended curriculum when the conversation seemed to want us to do so. We allowed ourselves to be in the moment, to be in flow, to improvise — just bringing our full selves to the table and being fully present.

The response from everyone there reinforced the following…

Message from the Universe: What you naturally bring to the table is actually enough.

The Message of the Hangout Idea

This past week was also when I officially announced that I’m bringing back my free monthly telephone chats, but in a new, turbocharged, totally remodeled format — as video hangouts!

I emailed my peeps to let them know what was coming, and invited them to sign up on the special hangouts mailing list, if they want to get the login info for the hangouts, and access to the recordings afterwards.

What are these hangouts? Nothing more than me, a special guest-of-the-month, and everyone participating at that given hangout, bringing ourselves to the table. Sharing our creative process. Sharing our art, or music, or poetry. Sharing our thoughts, our tips and techniques for keeping Resistance and the Inner Critic Gremlin at bay, and getting to the important work of doing our creative thing(s).

No Get Rich Quick schemes. No Secrets of Instant Success.

Just real people, embracing our creativity and being real.

The response kinda blew me away. What had been my telephone chat list (and is now my hangouts list) increased by 37%, just like that.

Yep, people are hungry for this. (If you are too, please join us! You can sign up right here.)

Message from the Universe: What you naturally bring to the table is actually enough.

Wrapping up

There was more. The inspiring recordings inside Jennifer Louden and Michele Christenson’s truly amazing course, TeachNow. Which led me to subscribe to Susan Piver‘s newsletter. Susan’s video of this week. The conversation with my best friend in which I realized that there might possibly be some shades of grey between running myself into the ground and being comatose.

All of these and more drove home the same message from the Universe in gentle, powerful ways.

Message: I am enough.

Confession: I’d be lying if I thought my deep feeling of not being enough was permanently liquidated from this week’s serendipitous messages from the Universe. But I am starting to believe that perhaps I really am enough.

And that’s a great start.

Where can you see that you are truly enough, just as you are?

xo, Melissa <3
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