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Banish Your Inner Critic: Silence the Voice of Self-Doubt to Unleash Your Creativity and Do Your Best Work
Library of Congress Cataloging
ISBN: (paperback) 978-1-63353-471-1, (ebook) 978-1-63353-472-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017906492
BISAC category code SEL009000 SELF-HELP / Creativity
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
For my sister Diane and my mother Deloria.
May they both continue to see, own, and fully stand in the power of their phenomenal creative selves.
“Every creative person I know, from designers to CEOs, suffers from the inner voice that tells us we’re not good enough, we’re not special enough, and darn it, nobody likes us. While a little humility is a good thing, too much self-doubt can keep you from achieving what you were put on earth to accomplish. Being your best, authentic self is the only way to fulfill your dreams and leave the world better than you found it. Denise Jacobs can guide you away from your self-imposed naysayers and set you on the path to achieving the serene self-confidence you deserve. Nobody charts this terrain better than she does.”
- Jeffrey Zeldman, studio.zeldman & An Event Apart
“We are our own worst enemy and harshest critic when it comes to expressing ourselves. Fear holds us back from reaching our potential and gaining the recognition we deserve. That is why I am so excited about Denise’s book. Banish Your Inner Critic is the book I have been waiting for. A book I believe will inspire a new generation to step out of the shadows and shine.”
- Paul Boag, author of User Experience Revolution
“Creativity will be the universal skill of the future in both business and in life. Banishing your inner critic is an ability everyone will need to work on. Denise is a creativity coach, who goes deep into the reasons why we commonly think we are not creative. She then gives us real solutions for how to overcome those hurdles, and bring out the inner creative inside of us. If you are looking to rekindle your creative instinct, have I got the book for you!”
- Jason Cranford Teague, Futurist Author & Speaker
“Banish Your Inner Critic: Great book! Easy to read and fun to use. Denise Jacobs has done a wonderful job of taking the complexity of self, and creating a system for each of us to access our creativity and release our creative power. Denise breaks down the inner critic into types and guides each reader through the process to access her distinctive creative self. Banish Your Inner Critic provides knowledge, insight, tools and practice for getting unstuck and expressing full creative potential. Plus, reading Denise’s book is like spending time with her, and she’s an inspiring delight.”
- Rebecca Stockley, Co-Founder of BATS Improv in San Francisco CA, www.improvlady.com
“Denise brings a practical approach to silencing the voice in your head determined to undermine your ability to work. Banish Your Inner Critic is a manual for finding the destination, direction, and drive to succeed at life. As a remote worker I frequently find myself with self-doubt and rampant imposter syndrome. I now have the tools to purge those blockers from my mind and be the creative person I know I am.”
- Aaron Douglas, Mobile Software Lead, Automattic (& WordPress.com)
“Banish Your Inner Critic is a must-read for everyone who has ever had self-doubt. As I read Denise’s book, my head nodded in agreement and heralded a whole heap of ‘ah-ha’ moments for me. This is Denise at her creative best. I encourage you, Dear Reader, to go deep to banish your inner critic!”
- Kylie Hunt, Workplace, Productivity & Happiness Specialist
“With creativity comes periods of self-judgment that cause anxiety or paralysis. For designers, there is always this critical voice inside that questions what we are doing from time to time. However, whether you are a creative professional or not, everyone has the potential to be creative. In this book, Denise Jacobs empowers readers to silence their inner critic and unlock their potential to be their best creative self.”
- Andy Vitale, UX Design Principal, 3M Health Care
“There is an Inner Critic in all of us and it may be the thing that is stopping us from reaching our full creative potential. In this delightful book, Denise openly shares her own struggles with self-criticism, making us feel like we aren’t alone. She gives us permission to own it, the tools to get unblocked, and get on the path to a more creative self.”
- Jessie Shternshus, Founder of The Improv Effect and Author of Ctrl Shift: 50 Games For 50 ****ing Days Like Today
“It’s harder than ever to turn down the voices and channels vying for your attention; even when you do, you may find your own inner critic ready to thwart your creative efforts. But Denise Jacobs offers compassionate and practical guidance for overcoming those doubts, channeling your focus, and getting down to creating.”
— Kate O’Neill, founder of KO Insights and author of “Pixels and Place: Connecting Human Experience Across Physical and Digital Spaces”
“The high tech world has created an epidemic of impostor syndrome. People doubt themselves. You can disagree when others doubt you, but when you doubt yourself, who’s going to defend you? Take your power back! In this book, author Denise Jacobs gives you the practical tools you need to own the room by owning your self. Banish that inner devil’s advocate and become as powerful as you can be.”
- Alan Cooper, Software Alchemist, co-founder of Cooper, and Author
Table of Contents
Triumphing Over My Own Inner Critic
It’s Time for You to Triumph Too
Dude, Where’s the Writing Space?
The Origin of the Inner Thoughts
Chapter 1 | Why Banish the Inner Critic?
Creativity vs. The Inner Critic
Chapter 2 | Take Back Your Creative Power
Recognize the Power of Thinking Differently
Take Advantage of the Brain’s Plasticity
Creative Dose: Mindful Thought Acceptance
Awaken Your Compassionate Self
Creative Dose: Self-Esteem vs. Self-Indulgence vs. Self-Compassion
Creative Dose: The Voice of Support
Glean Your Inner Critic Afflictions
Recognize Your Inner Critical Voice
Creative Dose: The Critical Voices in Your Head
Creative Dose: Identify It and Name It
Learn the Guises of the Inner Critic
Creative Dose: The Many Faces of The Inner Critic
Creative Dose: Identify Your Inner Critic Achilles’ Heel
It All Begins With the First Step
Chapter 3 | “People Will Think My Work Is Dumb” - Judgment Dread
Are They Judging Me? They’re Judging Me, Aren’t They?
Dreading Judgment
Understand the Need to Belong
Know Negativity Bias and the Nature of Fear
Creative Dose: F.E.A.R.
Reconcile the Fear of Rejection
Creative Dose: A Face of Approval
See Reality More Clearly
Recognize Cognitive Distortions
Know Your Cognitive Distortions
Creative Dose: Surprise Journal
Seek Positive Confirmation
Creative Dose: Swipe File of Support
Stop Awfulizing
Creative Dose: “And then...”
Practice Radical Ratification
Stop Hiding in Plain Sight
Creative Dose: Your Uniqueness Advantage
Accept Who You Are
Creative Dose: Embrace Your Shake
Live Better Through Criticism
Creative Dose: Curious and Open
Stay True to Yourself
Creative Dose: More Clear, More Empowered
Choose to Contribute
Creative Dose: Focus on the Work
We’ve Only Just Begun
Chapter 4 | “Nothing I Do Is Any Good” - High Self-Criticism
Put the Hammer Down
Self-Criticism Constrains
Attend To Your Self-Talk
Release Outdated Expectations and Shake Off Shame
Creative Dose: Get At the Source
Come To Your Own Defense
Creative Dose: Compassion for the Selves
Stay In the Present
Creative Dose: The Anti-Rumination Hand Squeeze
Creative Dose: S.H.I.F.T. to Three+3
Get Perspective and Gain Control
Create A Healthy Mental Distance
Creative Dose: Self-Talk Reboot
Break On Through To the Other Side
Creative Dose: Inner Critic Undoing
Change Your Mind By Hand
Creative Dose: Swipe Left
Cease Self-Censoring
Question and Challenge
Creative Dose: Get Up, Stand Up
Tune In to Tune Out
Creative Dose: Turn Down Da Noise, Turn Down Da Funk
Reassign Duty
Creative Dose: The Inner Critic As An Intern
Walking Away From the Hammer
Chapter 5 | “I’m Not Good Enough”- Deficiency Anxieties
Enough is Enough
Use Your Brainpower For Good
Think Like a Scientist
Creative Dose: Emotion and Thought Inquiry
Shift to Ample
You Are Enough
Creative Dose: Take Inventory
Readjust to Trust
Creative Dose: The Parallel Trust Universe
Be A Friend Indeed
Creative Dose: Quantum Companionship
Learn, Expand, and Mix It Up
Believe That You Can Be Informed and Able
Know the Four Stages of Competence
Creative Dose: Quick Learnin’
Build Skills With Intention
Creative Dose: Practice Deliberately
Amp Up Your Ability to Listen
Creative Dose: Take In, Reflect Back
Raise A Barn
Creative Dose: Join Forces and Plus It
Steal Like An Artist to Remix
Creative Dose: Be a Mixmaster
Beyond Enough
Chapter 6 | “I’m Not As Creative As Everyone Else” - Comparison Syndrome
Comparison Syndrome Takes Deficiency Anxiety to Eleven
Unenviable Envy
Break the Compulsion to Compare
Arrest: Stop the Triggers
Creative Dose: Trigger-free and Happy
Assess: Become Self-Referential
Creative Dose: Apples to Apples
Creative Dose: Keep Your “But” Out of It
Attune: Embrace Your “Onlyness”
Creative Dose: Determining Distinctiveness
Move From Stagnation to Action
Ascertain: Learn from Envy
Creative Dose: What Lies Beneath Your Envy
Admire: Transform Envy
Creative Dose: A Comparison Syndrome Intervention
Creative Dose: To Admiration and Beyond
Acknowledge: Recognize Effort and Reward Success
Creative Dose: A Celebration of Effort and Achievement
Act: Start Your Own Adventures
Creative Dose: Take Action
Leveling Up
Chapter 7 | “I’m Not Creative” - Creativity Denial
What State Are You in?
Confirm Your Creativity
Acknowledge Your Abilities
Creative Dose: “Yes, I Am”
Use Your Imagination for Good
Creative Dose: What’s in the Box?
Bestow Upon Yourself
Creative Dose: “I dub thee...”
Overcome Overwhelm
Transform Imposition into Opportunity
Creative Dose: Word Choice
Reclaim Time, Create Mental Space
Creative Dose: To Don’t List
Hack Your Body-Mind
Creative Dose: Cop a Power Pose
Dispel Creativity Misgivings
Intend Inspiration
Creative Dose: Inspiration-Hunting
Become an Idea Machine
Creative Dose: 10 Ideas a Day
A Change of State
Chapter 8 | Step Into Your Creative Power
The Road Home
Be More Of Yourself
Become Self-full to Become Self-less
Creative Dose: Refilling the Cup
Use Your Creativity for Good
Creative Dose: Where Experience, Skill, and Need Meet
Shine Your Light
Be Your Brilliance
Creative Dose: Tune In To Your Strengths
Share Your Brilliance
Creative Dose: Share Your Expertise
Be Stronger Together
Have (At Least) Two Heads
Creative Dose: The Buddy System
Give Validation, Get Validation
Creative Dose: Give What You Didn’t Get
Welcome Home
Afterword
Realizing Dreams
What’s Next?
Take the Work Further
Work With Me
Connect With Me
Connect with me online
Share the Love
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Notes
“Banish your inner critic to Madagascar on an expedition to search for rare lemurs.”
— Marelisa Fabrega, writer & blogger (inspired by SARK, Make Your Creative Dreams Real)
Introduction
Are You Doing Your Best Work?
You’re feeling the pressure to perform: you’re on a tight deadline, and there is a lot riding on your ability to come up with something great.
But, try as you might...nothing. You can’t think, you can’t problem-solve. You’re uninspired. Generating new or interesting ideas?
You wish!
Why?
Because you
shoot down your ideas before they even have a chance
call yourself a failure because others around you are succeeding
discount your ideas because they aren’t 100 percent original
tell yourself that you’re just not creative at all
have a hard time valuing what you create
can’t imagine creating without anguish and effort, so you make it true...
Unsurprisingly, you, my friend, are completely creatively blocked.
And then, when you tune into your internal self-talk, you find a steady torrent of self-chastisement, internal insults, and put-downs:
“Why can’t you come up with anything?!”
“Wow – so you’ve got a master’s in marketing and this is all
“You’re an idiot! Think, for chrissakes!”
Yikes!
Your creative paralysis is all the more frustrating because you’ve been on the other side. You’ve had moments when you danced at the intersection of your skills, interests, natural abilities, and aptitudes. You were excited, completely engaged, and seemed to be an endless fount of ideas and solutions. You felt completely knowledgeable, powerful, and competent. Whatever it was that you were doing, you totally nailed it. The experience was fantastic.
For many of us, creating is a tortured process. The torture, however, is not inherent in creating itself, but instead comes from the fears we have around our ability to create. The constellation of our fears manifests as the Inner Critic. This psychological construct can trick us into believing the very worst about ourselves and our ability to create or do anything else of value in the world. It blocks the amazing ideas we have inside from coming out. The Inner Critic keeps us from accessing and expressing the very thing we desire: the flow of our creativity.
Based on several years of research on the creative process, articles written and presentations developed and delivered around the world, survey feedback, coaching clients, and most importantly, talking with conference and workshop attendees and other creatives of all sorts in multiple industries, I know that the Inner Critic is the largest block to creativity that exists.
To create, we need to acknowledge the Inner Critic and the damage it does to our work life, personal life, and general well-being.
To create lasting change, however, we really need to learn how to break its power over us so we can regain our capacity to create.
I wrote this book because I want you to be able to work better, produce more, and create with a higher level of excellence than you already do. By identifying and disempowering the various forms of the Inner Critic that plague us, we can remove the barricades standing between us and our full creative expression. This book will help you do just that.
However, I also wrote this book because I feel your pain. I know the topography of self-criticism personally: I have struggled with a particularly mean and relentless Inner Critic that has made me miserable at for most of my life. Because of my own Inner Critic, I have traveled far and wide in the lands of self-judgment and self-doubt, dismissing the creativity that I did have, believing that my work wasn’t good enough, and being so focused on what others were doing that I couldn’t see my own strengths or progress.
Imagine being able to create without the internal mental friction of the Inner Critic. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? It’s not just a pipe dream – it can be done. I know because I’ve experienced it myself.
You see, not only do I write this book from the standpoint of someone who was unsure that she was truly creative; I also write it from the standpoint of someone who has finally silenced her Inner Critic, who embraces and owns her creativity, and who now feels unstoppable.
Triumphing Over My Own Inner Critic
There are those who, by either good fortune or hard work, are not afflicted by self-doubt and don’t seem to have much of an Inner Critic at all. And then there are the rest of us: we who struggle daily to maintain a modicum of self-assurance as we go through our work and personal lives because of the barrage of self-critical inner dialogue that is our constant companion.
I used to be in this latter group – until I had an experience that changed my life. Let me tell you what happened.
When I wrote my first book, The CSS Detective Guide, the experience did not start out all sunshine and Santa Claus. I landed a book contract from a serendipitous meeting at a tech conference party, and I was thrilled to be on track to achieving my two big life goals:
1 Becoming an author, and
2 Using my expert status to become a speaker.
There was only one problem: I was terrified.
The first two days of my unrealistically aggressive schedule (four and a half months to write a 250-page tech book) found me sobbing on my couch. And let me be clear about this: I wasn’t sniffling quietly and dabbing at my eyes with a tissue. Oh no. I blubbered while sitting on the side of my couch, as my tears flowed onto the plush sage green fabric of the pillow I clutched to my chest. My fears of not knowing enough, looking stupid, being judged, being a fake and a fraud, and not being good enough all plagued me to the point of near-paralysis. Finally, on the third day I bucked up, put on my big-girl pants, and finally sat down to the very hard work of...researching. You know, the incredibly advanced and rigorous task of looking up articles on the web, reading them, and then earmarking relevant information to put in my book. Yes, it’s true: I had worked myself up into an emotional froth over something that I could practically do in my sleep. As a friend of mine would say: Crazypants!
During the next eight months of writing my book (because doing it in four and a half months was completely untenable), I came up against that inner critical voice that tried to block my ideas and creatively paralyze me almost daily. This voice told me every day that
my ideas were stupid
even though I had taught this subject for five years at a college level, that I wasn’t enough of an expert on it
my web designs were amateur and simplistic
people would judge me negatively and criticize my book for not being in-depth, complete, or advanced enough
That’s right: every day.
The way I often describe the experience is that instead of exercising creativity, I practiced its evil twin: destructivity. With every fearful thought of not being expert enough, not knowing enough, wondering if my writing was any good, and doubting my ability to design websites, I tore myself down. To try to build myself up, each day I had to focus on what was directly in front of me and do my best to ignore my anxieties about my perceived deficiencies. But they were still there.
Sometime in the fourth month of writing, I’d had enough. I needed
to figure out how to turn off (or at least manage) this unending parade of self-critical thoughts. I did a little bit of research on self-criticism and found out about this thing called the Inner Critic. Although I didn’t know it, something clicked inside of me, because a few days later, an idea for a presentation came to me in the shower. Still dripping wet and wrapped in a towel, I grabbed pencil and paper to jot down four pages of notes. A few weeks later, I was awakened at 5 a.m. by an idea for a creativity-busting workshop. Something big was brewing in my subconscious.
However, while I was designing the website for The CSS Detective Guide, I had a truly magical experience that changed everything.
To have my book’s website up before I spoke on a panel at the major tech conference South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive at the end of the week, I sat down to create my website mockup in Photoshop from a sketch so I could code it more easily. Much to my surprise, my quick sit-down consumed me, so much so that I was an hour and a half late going to a friend’s house for dinner. Through the whole evening, I longed to return to my designing, so when I got home at 12:30 a.m., I thought “I’ll just do a little bit and then go to bed.” 1 a.m., then 2 a.m., and then 3 a.m. rolled by, and I just couldn’t stop. With my favorite jazz playing in the background, I was in the high of creative flow as I experimented with color, typography, and layout. It was sheer bliss.
Finally, at 5:30 a.m., still fired up about designing, I stopped because I knew that if I didn’t, I would surely get a migraine the next day. Buzzing from the creative juices coursing through me, I did my best to go to sleep.
Waking up again a mere two hours later, I was eager to get back to my creation. My whole body effervesced with energy. In fact, I was beyond blissful: I was euphoric. I felt a continuous rush of excitement and power similar to that of being in love. I felt like I could do anything I put my mind to. I felt like the ultimate version of myself: I felt the full power of my creative potential.
Only in retrospect did I understand why this was such an incredibly powerful peak experience: it was the first time in so long (maybe ever?) that I had experienced creating with no internal self-critical commentary: No thoughts of, “Is this any good?” or questioning my abilities. No comparing my design to those of other people.
No worrying about what other people would think or say about it. For the first time in eight months, I experienced criticism-free creating.
That day I made two monumental realizations:
First, that the absence of my Inner Critic allowed my creativity to flow! Because it was quiet, there was space for my creativity and ideas to come out to play.
Second, that creativity is power, and it’s a source of power that each and every one of us has.
Unfortunately, most of us rarely tap into our creative power. Why? For the same reason I sat on my couch and cried for two days instead of starting to write my book. Because of the litany of self-critical thoughts and the self-doubt that they generate. Because of the Inner Critic.
Immediately following those realizations, I had an even deeper epiphany: helping other people reach the feeling of being energized and completely alive by allowing their creativity to flow was what I wanted to do with my life. Why? Because when we remove the blocks, we can access this source of personal power. And when we learn to remove the blocks to more regularly access and channel our creative power, we can transform our lives and the lives of others – and change the world for the better.
I became obsessed: I threw myself into learning about the creative process, specifically how to remove creative blocks. No matter which approach I studied, whether it was based on psychology, neuroscience, productivity, or practicality, they all led back to the same place: the Inner Critic.
Completing my first book did indeed become the springboard for becoming a speaker in the tech industry. Once I had established a good reputation for myself, I shifted to speaking about the creative process, removing creative blocks, and silencing the Inner Critic. As I suspected, the content resonated deeply with audiences. When I took my presentation content a step further by writing an article called “Banishing Your Inner Critic,” the response was phenomenal. Hundreds of people posted and shared the article on social media for several days. It even got celebrity attention: on Google+, actress Felicia Day shared the article and vouched for the techniques that I shared. All of the responses validated what I had suspected when the idea for the creativity talk first came to me the shower: the Inner Critic is a problem that everyone has and that everyone needs help with.
During the next few years, through the feedback from more talks, keynotes, workshops, several more articles, coaching clients, and heartfelt emails from attendees and readers describing how much the information spoke to them and altered their lives, I knew it was time for me to reach an even wider audience. I knew then that I had to take my content to the next level and make it more accessible to even more people. The indications were clear: it was time for me write a handbook on how to Banish the Inner Critic. Through this book, I could help people reclaim their creative power and start achieving more success by silencing their own voice of self-doubt.
It’s Time for You to Triumph Too
You’ve felt lost and in a stupor, wandering your own wastelands of self-criticism. Fortunately, you are about to (re)discover your Creative Self and your Creative Power, and break yourself out of your Inner Critic-induced trance.
In this book, you will
learn the origins of the Inner Critic
discover the one brain function and three skills that you already possess to vanquish your Inner Critic
learn multiple methods to deal with the fear of being negatively evaluated by others
discover how to transform highly critical self-talk into that of approval and encouragement
work on bolstering your sense of self to feel that you and your ideas are good enough
acknowledge, unblock, and enhance your creativity
channel your now flowing creativity as a force for positive change in the world
You, my friend, are a pathfinder, and this book is a manual to guide you along the path of silencing your Inner Critic. Through the pages of this book, I’ll be your mentor, providing you with necessary information to change your thinking habits, and your coach, cheering you on as you release your inner critical thoughts and replace them with thoughts that support your creativity and motivate you to do your best work. Through this process, I’ve totally got your back.
But the best part is that through using the tools contained in these chapters, instead of being your own worst creative enemy, you’ll have your own back too. By the end of this process, you’ll only value and respect your creativity more, but you’ll also end up liking and appreciating yourself more on the whole. Furthermore, you’ll find yourself free from the weight of worrying about what others think, and you’ll be able to break away from the restrictions of shoulds, musts, and oughts. You’ll escape the trap of comparing yourself to others, and you’ll drop the belief that you don’t know enough or that you need to figure everything out by yourself.
Are you ready to start looking at the ways your Inner Critic shows up, discovering how to face your fears, bringing mistaken beliefs to the surface of your awareness, and moving beyond them to reach your own unique form of empowered creativity on the other side?
Read on, because we are about to embark on a journey to quiet that insidious Inner Critic so you can unleash your creativity, let your true talents shine, and start doing your best work – and ultimately, live your best life by channeling your creative power for good.
Let’s take the first step to a whole new world right now – together.
How to Use This Book
This book is your map for the journey back to your Creative Self.
It’s jam-packed with approaches for raising your awareness of behaviors and habits that are counter to your creative well-being, best practices to keep you from being creatively blocked from day to day, and techniques for profound and lasting change.
Because it is a road map, to make the best use of it, you need a key and legend, right? This information will help you to better navigate your way through the book and know what you’re looking at when you get to it.
The Content
Each chapter has a similar structure. Each has an overview of the topics covered, then kicks off with an anecdotal story of someone who is struggling with the particular guise of the Inner Critic covered in that chapter. A checklist of thoughts of people who share that particular form of Inner Critic will help you determine whether and how much you can relate.
Then you’ll jump right into the content, exploring various factors that contribute to this form of the Inner Critic, typical challenges and issues that result from it, and ways you can address the potential source of your Inner Critic struggles and move into a new headspace – all supported by research.
From there you’ll move on to the best part: one or more relevant exercises to put the concepts immediately into practice and start removing blocks to your creativity.
Exercises: Creative Doses
Because of the mind’s capacity to heal itself through mental training, much in the same way that medicine helps the body heal, the exercises in this book are aptly named “Creative Doses.”
The exercises are designed to throw your Inner Critic off guard, confuse it, give it a job, and distract it — all to break the stronghold that it has on your thoughts.
Similar to the way some medicines become more powerful over time, the potency of the Creative Doses is cumulative: the more you use them, the more effective they will become for you in creating a new mindframe.
In some ways, however, the most important thing may not be the exercises themselves but rather the philosophies that underlie them. These four principles are the essence the of the book, the underlying foundations for every exercise.
1 ChangeIt’s really the brain’s capacity to think differently and consequently change itself – neuroplasticity – that is the true underpinning of this work, and what will facilitate your transformation.
2 AwarenessWhen we think negative thoughts mindlessly, we fall victim to them. However, when we raise our awareness of our thoughts and know when the ones we want to weed out come up, we can take action.
3 AttentionChanging the brain is driven by where we place our focus. Our work in this book will rely upon our commitment to shift our attention to focus upon the thoughts that support our creativity and sense of self.
4 Self-Kindness and Self-CompassionYou’ll find the Inner Critic is born of the habit of self-chastisement. We will actively practice generating and directing the same compassion to ourselves as we would to others, and then actively be more kind and supportive to ourselves. In fact, one way to approach the Creative Dose exercises is to think of them as a kind future self talking to your current self, or even as a kind and compassionate version of your current self talking to your past self.
Creative Dose Structure
Each section of content has one related Creative Dose, sometimes two. The Creative Doses are tools and techniques that combine various modalities:
psychology tools
self-coaching techniques
mental reframes
mind-body hacks
productivity practices
visualizations
written exercises/writing assignments
quizzes
mindfulness practices
even improv techniques
While all Creative Doses open with a purpose to prepare you for the upcoming content, you will find the exercises follow several different structures. So that you know what to expect in terms of the brainpower and time needed to devote to them, here is an explanation of each:
1 SimpleWhat you see is what you get. The exercise is complete as is and has no additional steps, parts, or options, and often can be done in less time than the other exercises in this book.
2 StepsWhen you see that an exercise has steps, this means that there are multiple parts, with each part building upon the previous one in the sequence.
3 OptionsExercises with multiple options are those in which you have a choice: you can do the work of each option, or you can pick and choose among them. If you do choose to do all of the options, it’s not necessary to complete them in any particular order.
4 PartsExercises that have parts are substantive: each part could easily stand alone as an exercise by itself. Thus the parts of the exercise could be done independently from one another as separate exercises. Exercises with parts also usually require more time and thought.
5 Bonus ActionSome of the exercises have a “Bonus Action” which takes the exercises even further.
Online Companions
In several places in the book, there are links to download companion materials to the exercises online. These links are footnoted on the same page so that you can find them easily.
Guidelines for Success
This book is densely packed with a lot of information. It will probably take time to digest and assimilate all of it. To get the most out of the content and the process you’re about to embark upon, here are some tips for success.
Choose Your Path
The book is designed so that if you really want to get to the guise of the Inner Critic that affects you the most strongly and learn about the solutions for it, you can go directly to any particular chapter. In fact, there is a quiz in Chapter 2 that will help you identify your predominant Inner Critic guise so you will be able to do just that.
However, I recommend that you read the book in order from the beginning to the end. The chapters are written in such a way that each one builds on content in the previous chapters. Chapters 1 through 4 in particular are best read in sequence, as it is in these chapters that I lay out the foundational concepts.
Write It Out
For the exercises in this book, I encourage you to actually write everything down by hand instead of on a computer. Writing things on paper actually has an impressive array of benefits that will help in your process. Writing activates more parts of the brain than typing does, focusing and engaging the brain to digest information and learn from it, while helping the brain to develop and grasp new ideas and concepts.1 While it strengthens the memory – it’s easier to remember things that you’ve written down – writing also triggers deeper parts of the emotional brain. So make an effort to write it out to work it out.
Dude, Where’s the Writing Space?
You may be thinking “Okay, I’m supposed to write it out, but there are no lines for it in the book!” There’s a reason for that.
As much as I love reading self-help books, I’ve never been a fan of the lines provided for doing the exercises. Between you and me, I find them somewhat intimidating, or more accurately, accusatory. Why? They highlight the fact that I’m more interested in thinking through the exercises and finding out the next bit of information than writing my thoughts down. Additionally, due to my reverence for books, I abhor writing in them.
Personally, I find lines confining. My preference is to write on blank paper, free of lines so that neither my ideas nor my thinking are constrained.
So instead of providing space to write in the book, I recommend that you use the companion Banish Your Inner Critic Journal, or get a dedicated notebook of the variety that you like best, and use that to do the exercises in.
Give Yourself Time to Process
As a good friend of mine likes to say, in this book, we’re going to do deep. You’re probably going to hit some pockets of feelings and emotions that have not seen the light of day for some time. Make sure that after you’ve read the information and the exercises, you give yourself time to mull things over and see what comes up for you. There’s no need to rush this process. Your Inner Critic has been there for a long, long time. Give yourself adequate time to transform it.
Last but not least, here is my creative counsel: final recommendations for getting the most out of this process.
1 Set your intention to start the process of silencing your Inner Critic
2 Understand that this is a long game — not a sprint.
3 In place of only celebrating accomplishment, give yourself credit for effort. In other words, don’t wait to give yourself kudos until you have been able to do something “perfectly” or have arrived at some point of completion. Congratulate yourself on having started the process at all, and continue to congratulate yourself for sticking with it.
4 Be kind to yourself. Now’s the time, you’ve beaten yourself up enough.
Read and Revisit
This book is only as powerful as your application of the concepts contained here. Don’t just read the book – really make an effort to put the foundational principles and exercises into practice. And bear in mind that sometimes we need to return to a book to really take full advantage of the teachings in it. As you change and develop, you will be ready for new information. Something that only partially resonated when you read it the first time may be exactly what you need for a breakthrough when you revisit it the second, third, or even fourth time.
The Origin of the Inner Thoughts
The inner thoughts at the beginning of each chapter are not fabricated. Rather, they are from attendees to my Banish Your Inner Critic keynote and creativity workshops from 2015 to 2016. I lead an exercise that I got from my friend and colleague Jessie Shternshus: I ask everyone to write down one fear that they have around creativity, crumple the paper into a ball, and then throw it across the room. Then I have everyone pick up a paper ball that lands near them and share what was written there out loud. I’ve gathered these “snowballs” to use as examples of actual fears gathered anonymously from professionals just like you. The “snowballs” come from attendees at conferences like Adobe Max: The Creativity Conference, HOW Interactive, the British Columbia Chapter of the American Marketing Association, MinneWebCon, UX Lisbon, UX Australia, Delight Conference and others.
Disclaimers
This book is not intended to be a substitute for the advice or care of a trained mental health professional, so readers should consult with one regarding any serious matters relating to your mental health or concerning serious mental health conditions. The information contained within this book is strictly for educational purposes. If you wish to apply these ideas, you are taking full responsibility for your choices, actions, and results.
For the anecdotes at the beginning of the chapters, the names and identifying details have been altered or changed complete to protect the privacy of the individuals. Actual names and details were used only with each individual’s permission and blessing.
Last but not least, know in advance that “earworms” – pieces of music that get stuck in your mind that are incredibly difficult to dislodge – may be caused by certain chapter, section, or subsection titles in this book. The only known antidote for a pervasive earworm is to replace it with another. I apologize in advance. If it makes you feel any better, I had the song “Emotions” by Samantha Sang and the Bee Gees running through my head the entire time I was writing Chapter 1 – and that subtitle didn’t even make the final cut.
