on quieting my inner critic
My first thought upon posting here for the first time was: “Yay!”
My second thought was: “OMG I AM PUBLIC ON THE INTERNET I MIGHT DIE.”
See, this is how my inner critic works. I stumbled across the idea of an inner critic for the first time when reading Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way many years ago. It was a concept that I identified with immediately – my critic’s voice has been present as far back as I can remember.
Generally, it works like this:
Me: “Hey! I should do this thing!” Critic: “What a stupid idea.”
Or,
Me: “Hey! I did something neat!” Critic: “The thing you did is completely insignificant.”
And on, and on, etcetera.
It’s an awfully tiring process, constantly being at odds with oneself. The biggest area of my life that this self-war has affected is my dream of being a writer. I’ve wanted to be a writer since, well, forever. And the thing about lifelong dreams is, they’re kinda scary. Being so completely invested in something means having a lot to lose if it doesn’t pan out.
So what was my solution? Not writing, of course. I just went ahead and listened to my inner critic. Because if you don’t try for something, you can’t fail at it.
Except, the thing about me is, I don’t give up very easily. It can be character flaw in some situations, but it’s proven quite useful in this one. Despite all of the other plans I created for myself, I never gave up on writing. It was always there, underneath the big bad voice of my critic, waiting for me to get the courage to take a chance on myself.
And the thing I’ve learned is that my inner critic is just a big ol’ bully. And more importantly, it’s usually wrong. And even more importantly, the more I ignore it, the quieter it becomes.
So writing publicly on the internet? Yeah, kinda scary. But also freeing. And quieting. And pretty damn neat.
Posted by erin | 3 comments
