so the Creative Self can do what it does best: creating.
The Inner Critic is like static, while the Creative Self is the station you’re trying to tune in to. We do have a choice: we don’t have to listen to the static. By giving the Inner Critic less of our bandwidth, we access, express, and cultivate our creativity; we take back our creative power. From this place of reclaimed creative power, we can go after even bigger challenges.
Reclaiming creativity is an act of courage: choosing to act in the face of the fear that the Inner Critic generates, and making a conscious choice to think differently in order to access your Creative Self.
How do we reach this Creative Self? Trying to fix the affliction of the Inner Critic with its own tools is not going to work. You can’t bully, threaten, or coerce the Inner Critic. It wrote the handbook and knows all of the tricks. No, we have to use a totally different approach to banish the Inner Critic.
With training, the mind can replace distorted patterns of thinking. To release the Inner Critic’s hold on our creative thinking and access to our creativity, we’re going to set out to learn new approaches, practices, and tools. In the coming chapters, we’ll discover much-needed antidotes to the Inner Critic’s pernicious guises of the fear of judgment and criticism, being highly self-critical, feeling deficient, having a habit of comparison, and denying creativity.
Are you ready? Let’s retrain our minds so that we can banish the Inner Critic, access our Creative Selves, and reclaim our creative power.
Chapter 2 | Take Back Your Creative Power
This chapter examines:
Neuroplasticity
Attention and Focus
Meta-Cognitive Learning
Mindfulness
Self-Compassion
Identifying the Inner Critical Voice
Guises of the Inner Critic
Inner Critic Questionnaire
“Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and conquer Resistance.”
– Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
Feeling the flow of ideas rushing forth from inside of you to interface with the world is an amazing sensation. What is not such an amazing sensation, however, is when this outpouring is met with judgment and criticism. In the absence of a strong sense of self, it’s easy to feel like you need to do something to try to prevent the threat of criticism in the future.
As the self-appointed protector of your sense of self, the Inner Critic strikes a deal. “Tell you what,” it says, “You listen to my guidance, and I’ll keep you safe. In exchange, all you need to do is hand over the creative part of yourself to me.”
You’re skeptical. “But...how will I access my creativity?”
“Oh, you can still get to it – you’ll totally have visiting rights,” says the Inner Critic. “You just have to go through me, that’s all. You’ll feel better and I’ll get to do my job. It’s a win-win situation.”
You’re still not entirely convinced, but you don’t know what else to do. Reluctantly, you relinquish your Creative Self, your best buddy and keeper of your creative power, to the care of the Inner Critic.
As time goes on, however, it’s clear that you got a bum deal. The only time you can get through to see your Creative Self is when the Inner Critic is relaxed, distracted, or asleep. And because it’s so dedicated to its job, you rarely see your creativity anymore. In fact, it’s been so long since you’ve seen your Creative Self that you’re not even sure you’d recognize it.
The so-called “protective” guidance of the Inner Critic is misleading, based on incomplete or inaccurate information, or just plain wrong. Instead of feeling protected and safe, you feel more vulnerable to the prospect of external criticisms and less confident of yourself and your abilities. What’s more, the Inner Critic lacks both bedside manner and compassion, so its messages are often hurtful – and now they come from inside your head instead of from other people.
But even worse than being hurtful, the Inner Critic’s messages have poisoned you, leaving you mesmerized and confused, causing you to wander around in a daze of self-criticism, self-judgment, and self-doubt. You’ve become so disoriented by the spurious messages of the Inner Critic that you don’t realize you’ve gone astray, wandering farther and farther away from your Creative Self and creative power. Now you’re lost and don’t quite remember how to get back to where the Inner Critic is keeping your Creative Self. Under the influence of the Inner Critic, you’ve forgotten that your Creative Self and your creative power actually haven’t gone anywhere. They are both still home.
You were duped. Things aren’t better with the Inner Critic in charge. The Inner Critic’s guidance isn’t helping. The messages aren’t even original – they’re all based on what other people have said to you. What’s worse, the Inner Critic is not protecting your Creative Self; instead the over-zealous guarding causes it to starve.
When you made the deal, what you didn’t know is this: the reason the Inner Critic is keeping your Creative Self so tightly under wraps is that it is aware of one of paradoxes of creativity – that expressing creativity is an expression of power, and because it is so powerful, it’s also a threat.
The expression of creativity opens worlds of possibilities and activates probable futures. Within this is the potential of becoming more visible, and therefore being open to the threat of criticism. Such vulnerability triggers the fear of losing our sense of belonging and safety in the world. The Inner Critic is keenly aware of this. Its goal is to prevent this eventuality at all costs. Unfortunately, because creativity is something that gets stronger and expands the more we use it, your Creative Self now slowly languishes.
Allowing your Inner Critic to continue barring your access to your creativity is a grave injustice; the Inner Critic doesn’t really know what to do with your power, it just fears the potential ramifications of it. But you do know. You’re the one who knows what to do with your creative power: how to channel it, leverage it, and expand upon it. You know what you are drawn to create, what comes effortlessly to you and through you. You know that your capacity to be creative will only increase the more you use it.
You realize that you don’t need your Inner Critic to protect your Creative Self. You can choose to learn new ways to bolster your sense of self to protect against external criticisms and judgments.
It’s time to break the deal.
It’s time to take back what is rightfully yours.
It’s time to regain your close relationship with your Creative Self.
It’s time to take back your creative power.
To Reclaim, We Must Rebuild
“I want to reclaim who I am.”
– Elizabeth Edwards, author and attorney
You’re motivated. You’re ready for a change.
