TGIF!

Today the Inner Critic gets a dose of the Raspyni Brothers: Welcome to Vaudeville 2.0. Watch it then go do something fun. It’s the weekend! Woohoo!

Celebrity Smackdown: Maya Angelou

Today’s smackdown is directly from the pen of one of the greatest writers of our time, Maya Angelou. During her career she has written twenty-five books, articles, poems, plays, and speeches yet even she must deal with the Inner Critic. Her latest book, Letter to my Daughter is a collection of essays about her life. Today I’m going to meditate on the meaning of this quote:

“When I decide to write anything, I get caught up in my insecurity despite the prior accolades. I think, uh, uh, now they will know I am a charlatan that I really cannot write and write really well. I am almost undone, then I pull out a new yellow pad and as I approach the clean page, I think of how blessed I am.

The ship of my life may or may not be sailing on calm and amiable seas. The challenging days of my existence may or may not be bright and promising. Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow.

Today I am blessed.”

–Maya Angelou

Make your life your performance.

Watch this performance by storyteller and poet Rives for TED. Rives is also the co-host with model Bar Refaeli of Bravo TV’s Ironic Iconic America, which launched last month.

Now go write your own poem or story or paragraph about your life and recite it out loud alone in your room or for your friends or record it and post it on YouTube. Then think about how your day-to-day life is like performance art. Only you’re on stage and in the audience. Today, are you performing a drama, tragedy, comedy, romantic comedy or all of the above? Will you cry, boo, heckle or laugh at yourself?

Money Is Not Evil.

There is a huge dichotomy within the American culture around the idea of wealth. On one hand there is the notion that money is bad and to want wealth is evil. On the flip side, money is useful. We need money to eat, to heat our houses, to send our children to college. Those who don’t make the money to support themselves are considered lazy, manipulative, and a drain on society. So which is it? Is money good or bad? It’s actually neither. Money is simply a tool. But how you feel about that tool is important to know because it will influence your decisions around how you make, spend, save, and give away your cash.

So what do you think? If you think that wanting money is a bad thing, then make a list of all the wealthy people you know who have done good things with their wealth. We’ll help you get started:

Bill and Melinda Gates, Bono, Dolly Parton, Warren Buffett. Check out Charlie Rose’s interview with Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates when Buffett gave their foundation $30 billion of his own money.

 

Smackdown Success Story: Stephanie Watson

Stephanie Watson is the author of Elvis & Olive, a children’s book that was published by Scholastic in April 2008. She knows plenty about smacking down her inner critic. And she does a helluva job at it, too. Besides her first novel, she has two more books she’s working on and a busy career as a freelance writer. Here she talks to us about her strategies for smacking down The Heavyweight.

Do you have an active inner critic?

Who doesn’t? Mine works over time. Really diligent. A very hard worker.

When things are going well the critic likes to say things like, “This won’t last,” or “You’ll be discovered soon.” And when it’s difficult and the writing is not coming as easy as I like it to, then the critic says, “See what did we tell you before?” So yeah, it’s something that will always be with me and I feel will always be a companion but it’s about finding a way to trick the critic or somehow leave him behind. There are all kinds of things that do seem to work. I like trying a bunch of different things. No one thing works forever. It seems like the critic gets wise to your strategies. So trying a lot of different things can work well.

I really love reading books. I don’t know if you’d call them writers’ self-help books, but they are for writers, like The Courage to Write by Ralph Keyes and The Writers Book of Hope. Mostly they are filled with stories of how other writers or artists of any kind have struggled. There’s something about reading about other people’s journey through fear that gives me courage. If I hear that some of my favorite writers are battling the same demons, it makes it seem possible to get over that somehow or at least to temporarily escape the critic in order to be able to write something.

I think if you keep moving that helps. There was a big critique of this new book I’m working on and it really flattened me for a week. And I felt like if I can start moving again it will be okay. Even if the writing is difficult or not coming easy there is something about getting back into motion that seems to help a lot. The critic seems to be a slow moving beast. So if you can run fast enough… That’s something I am doing right now. I am waiting for feedback on this piece, and I decided I’m going to do this crazy thing. I’m going to write a picture-book manuscript every day for two weeks, just to be totally reckless, and like I don’t care! They can be garbage, I don’t care. Because I feel like if I stop there is too much silence and I start hearing the critic’s voice: “You suck.” It’s a lot of fun to write a picture book every day and it does seem to quiet that voice. And also at the end of two weeks hopefully I will hear back by then. If not at least I will have escaped two weeks of worrying, and I might have at least a couple of workable manuscripts that I can edit into something I can sell. Out of fourteen manuscripts there’s got to be something good. That’s a new trick.

It’s like the national novel writing month, It’s the same principle. Just run like hell, and the critic can’t keep up.

Has your inner critic kept you from doing something before?

Yeah, I think so. I think that’s what keeps me going. It’s more scary to think that I might miss an opportunity. I don’t want to ever look back and say I think, “I should have done that.” When I was in college, I was in a comedy improv group. I don’t think I knew enough to be scared about it. It was something I fell into. It was only later that I was realized that was a really scary thing to do. A few years ago I was thinking back on that and I asked myself, could I do that now? And the idea that I would not do it now because it was scary made me feel like now I have to do it. So now I’m in a comedy improv group. It’s terrifying. We perform on Tuesdays at the Brave New Workshop. It’s so scary. Every Tuesday I’m like why am I doing this? But I just want to do those things that scare me so I don’t feel bad about not having done them.

You feel very alive when you do something that makes you feel afraid. In this book I read it talks about the gifts of fear. Fear makes you very alert and anxiety makes your mind very sharp. So you approach something you’re afraid of with anxiety, but it makes you act quickly and be clever in a way that maybe you couldn’t be if you were super relaxed about it. I like that idea that maybe being afraid is not only okay but maybe you want to be a little afraid so that ultimately you do a better job and give it more concentration. That’s another thing that helps the critic. “Yeah, I’m afraid. So?” That’s what I say to myself when I’m about to go on stage with the comedy improv. “Yeah, my hands are shaking. So?” It’s uncomfortable and my inclination is to run out the door, but I’ll just stay here and be here with that fear and do it anyway. And then it ends up not mattering that I was afraid. The same holds true for writing.

Celebrity Smackdown: Sarah Palin

Many comments can be made about Sarah Palin, but it really all boils down to one thing.

Today’s conservative newspaper The Daily News ran this headline –

“Sarah Show: Pit bull hangs tough in clash with Biden”

Sarah Palin, are you aware that your supporters are referring to you as a dog?

It doesn’t matter if they tell you they’re using it as a term of endearment. Any woman who is truly powerful, strong, and confident, would never allow herself to be called a bitch in a professional situation.

Relationships: Alone Together

Katie and Joshua.

Day Job Vs. The Dream

“By day I sell mobile phones. My dream is to spend my life doing what I feel I was born to do. I’ve always wanted to sing as a career. Confidence has always been a difficult thing for me. I always find it a little bit difficult to be completely confident in myself.” –Paul Potts

Safe to Fail

Danielle Stein wrote a profile, Queen Anne, in W Magazine about the actress Anne Hathaway. That girl has performed some major smackdowns lately and I say Brava! Check it out:

Hathaway is the first to admit that her intensity can be paralyzing. “Emily Blunt kind of changed my approach to acting,” she says of her Prada costar, who has become a close friend. “She just f—ing got on with it. She’d just jump off the diving board. I’d stop, look at the water and then jump. And suddenly I just thought, Why, her way looks so much more fun.”

She was able to shed her inhibitions on Rachel, which features an unwieldy cast of musicians, poets and performance artists portraying Rachel’s wedding guests. “Filming was kind of like going to artistic master-class summer camp,” says Hathaway. “It was not the usual movie set with big trailers and having to ask to go to the bathroom. I was always really into theater, and I’d always hoped I’d find a community of artists to nestle my way into. On this movie I felt like I had a tribe. And everyone had their own process, so you couldn’t look odd, which was lovely. I felt free of my rather overwhelming self-consciousness. I was in an environment where failure was okay.”

Love it! When she talks about the group of artists who made her feel free of her self-consciousness and allowed her to fail it reminds me of two life-changing moments. One was participating in Andre Debus III’s writing class while I was in graduate school at Emerson College in Boston. That was the first time I really felt like I could fail and learn from my mistakes and still persue my dreams. I’ll never forget the day he said, “I know I’ll see your books on the shelves somday.” And now he can! Check out Andre and his new book:  

The second time I found an environment like the one Hathaway describes was at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. When I moved to Minnesota I knew I needed to find other people who were going for similar dreams. One of the biggest smackdowns my Inner Critic has ever received was after a reading I did at a board meeting at the Loft. After I finished, no one laughed me out of the room. Established writers whom I hold in awe asked me when the book would be published as though it was inevitable that I would publish my work. They treated me as a peer and that moment helped me begin to think of myself as a published author. My Inner Critic was seriously smacked down that day.

Anne Hathaway’s friend and colleague Emily Blunt was also quoted in that article:

Blunt believes that the combination of her recent personal trials and the filming of Rachel Getting Married have initiated a sort of rebirth for Hathaway. “She puts pressure on herself, but I think she’s at a point where she can breathe and discover her whole bag of tricks,” says the British actress. “She has this newfound sense of confidence, and as her friend, that’s very exciting to see.”

To battle The Heavyweight, that crazy loud Inner Critic we absolutely need friends like this. Friends who are excited to see us grow. Friends who are not intimidated by confidence, shedding of old skins, our successes or our failures.

Make a list of all the people who make you feel safe to fail. Spend at least an hour with one of those people each week.

Where the Wild Things Are

I wonder of Mr. Sendak has ever had a daydream about visiting the island where the wild things live only to find out that they’ve all read his books. Not only read them but loved them. Not only loved them but believed they were the foundations for their world view. Hm. Everyone I know has read at least three Sendak books. Everyone I know still has them on their bookshelves whether they have children or not.

Mr. Sendak has certainly learned the art of smacking down inertia, procrastination, and the fine art of house maintenance in lou of doing his work. I say bravo! to him and everything he has achieved. I only wish he could accept his influence on today’s readers instead of constantly wishing he were some other kind of writer/illustrator/artist. I wish that for us all. That we can find a way to see our work as worthy even if it’s slightly askew from what we thought it would be.