You suck. You're the worst. You'll never be good at this.
At one time or another, we've all been our own worst critics.
That's what I'm writing about today: the critical part of your mind that holds you back; the one that beats you down rather than helping you improve.
I want to teach you a method that I use for transforming that unhelpful nagging critic into a force for growth and motivation.
Recognize your Bad Critic
Let’s imagine you were in a critique class for writing, and you received the comment, “you suck” from a classmate. Would you tolerate this kind of criticism?
Not likely. Instead, you'd probably just ignore it. Maybe you'd even take the person aside and try to help him understand how to give a helpful critique.
"You suck" isn't constructive criticism. It offers nothing that can be improved, so it doesn't matter. So then, what's the point of beating ourselves with this kind of self-criticism on a daily basis? There is none.
Which leads me to the Golden Rule of Self Criticism:
Don’t accept criticism from yourself that you wouldn’t accept from someone else.
How to Transform Your Inner Critic
Grab a few notecards or a small notebook. Every time you tell yourself “I suck,” “This is too hard,” “I'm the worst,” or any other unhelpful criticism, you're going to pull out a notecard and write down:
1. The unhelpful critique.
I'm the worst writer...
2. What specifically triggered the bad critic.
Because, I don't feel like my stories flow well...
3. One thing you can do to try and improve your practice. It doesn't have to be the solution, just something you can try.
Next time, I'm going to take more time to work on leading one paragraph into the next.
This technique needs to be practiced regularly. If you're looking for a challenge, try it out for 30 days.
What you'll find is that, Eventually, you start to let go of the cards as your mind automatically skips from step #1 to step #3. Finding a problem and presenting a variety of possible solutions, rather than circling around the repetitive and demotivating nagging of the unhelpful critic.
If you practice this technique, in a few weeks, you’ll find that more and more of your mistakes will lead to opportunity rather than doubt and you will have transformed your inner critic.
Here are two of my cards (#1 guitar, #2 writing) as examples:
One last thing, you must watch this video by Ira Glass on Creativity. It's fantastic:
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Photos CC0/public domain from pixabay.com