Time Out for the Inner Critic

Hi y’all, Clare here –

Jacque and I have been talking and we figured out that we need a bit of a hiatus from trackin’ the Inner Critic’s every move. Other writing projects are beckoning, or waving madly, or beating us over the head (in a good way), and I know you know how hard it is to balance out a schedule.

So we’re going to take a break from the blog for a while. In my ideal world, we’d have a random S.M.A.C.K. generator for you – Click and Smack! – but we just don’t have the tech savvy, yet. But of course, all our blog posts will stay right here where you need ‘em.

You can also still email us at clareandjacque@gmail.com with questions and comments and suggestions for new S.M.A.C.K.s; we’d love to hear from you.

Peace, and props for fighting the good fight –

Jacque and Clare

Rest.

Today, take a break from the Inner Critic–take a nap.

Robinson Crusoe

Escapist fantasies are in high demand these days. The next time you imagine disappearing into happy isolation from the crappy, Inner Critic-ridden world, take a closer look at your dreamscape. How much of the bliss is actually coming from the end of the story, the imagined reunion with the people you love, in a better time with everyone in a better mood?

Skip the isolation and make that world real now. Set up an event that changes their moods and their minds, as well as yours

Anthem for Today

Out of your head, into the open….

Whatever that means for you

The Present Week

My brother and I were chatting last night about how to handle a situation where planning for your future conflicts with your enjoyment of the Now. In other words, when you can sit outside with a glass of lemonade and a good book for three hours, but you also need to start creating a contact list of people you’d like to informational interview in preparation for your next job search… how do you relax without feeling guilty?

Balance within yourself can happen in the present moment, but balance in your life takes a span of time. So as long as your week contains both the work and the relaxing, that’s balance. That’s fair. Think about your week ahead; do you have time planned for all sides of your life?

Then you don’t have to feel guilty through the especially pleasant parts.

Take your creativity into your own hands.

You don’t need anyone to help you get your work out into the world. Not anymore. With publishing on demand, podcasts, Internet radio, blogs, video, etc. etc. etc., it’s easier than ever to put your work into the hands of the people. Check out this cerealized (you’ll get it if you read it) story called Life is Life that children’s author Stephanie Watson is writing online. She and a group of pals are doing all the work themselves. And doesn’t it look like they’re having a blast?

What have you always wanted to do but thought you had to wait for the “establishment” to approve of you before you put yourself out there?

Second chances

Most of us have probably heard the adage that life presents you with the same problem over and over again until you figure out how to deal with it.

But I’ve been watching carefully, and I realized that life also presents you the same opportunity over and over again until you decide, for certain, whether you want to take it or not.

So if you have missed an opportunity and the Inner Critic is lambasting you for failing, pause. Realize that that opportunity is going to appear again, maybe in a slightly different form, but the same kind of opening. In your heart of hearts, when it re-appears, will you want it?

Don’t feel like you have to answer that question now. Your gut may only give you the answer when you hear the knocking.

In the meantime, an excellent way to prepare for the next go-round is to look at this past round and assess why it presented itself in the first place. Had you decided to do something different, go somewhere unusual? Go with the flow of someone else’s idea? What were your strengths that attracted that opportunity? What about you made that person, the bearer of the opportunity, look at you with possibility in their eyes? What strengths do you have that you didn’t reveal, but could have? What would you look like and feel like if you took the opportunity? And what would you look and feel like if you decided you really didn’t want it, instead of just missing it?

(The Inner Critic will also want to assess why you missed it, what were your weaknesses, how could you be such a stupid fool, etc. If you want to look at things you could have done better, then fine, but only if you accept that you *already* can do them better. They’re not weaknesses, they’re just not your automatic responses…yet. They will be if you want them to be. All the Inner Critic really needs to know is that you weren’t ready to make your choice yet, and there’s nothing foolish about that.)

Joy in the doing, joy in the done.

So my brother the artist calls me up yesterday and glumly confesses that his plans for his long-cherished designs for a unique, crazy brilliant series of lamps has hit another roadblock, yet again.

As we continue to talk, he reveals that the company he pitched the lamps concept to wants to contract with him as a designer, that the company is tapping a market of global proportions, and that a design he did that he never told me about was used by the owner of the company sixteen times over in his own house. Then he tells me about a truly jaw-dropping idea he just had for reinventing a simple doorknob.

I stopped him. “Dude,” I said. “You’re all passionate about the lamps and depressed about them, but you’re just like, Whatever, about all this other amazing stuff! You should be like, Whatever, about the lamps and jumping on the bed about everything else. Get your feelings straight, bud!” He got it, and laughed.

Why is it so hard for us to celebrate our successes?

A lot of reasons. For my brother, he was so focused on trying to pick one apple that he didn’t see the other apples falling off the tree, ready and waiting.

For me, usually when I’ve finished anything important, I’ve put so much work into it that I’m exhausted, and I need to sleep instead of celebrate.

Then when I wake up, I find that true success brings a feeling of rest and peace, which broadens my perspective. I look at that one accomplishment and see it as a link in the beautiful paper chain that is the life I created and am creating. Which means that the accomplishment loses importance, because I can see that everything was and is important. Why celebrate that moment and not any of the million moments that went into its making?

But to be totally honest, deep down, celebrating also feels like lighting a candle, sticking it in a muffin, and singing The Birthday Song to yourself, alone. There’s a reason parents make a fuss over their kids’ accomplishments: kids don’t know how to do it themselves, and the truth is we never really learn. Not only do we hope that somebody else will throw the party for us, we need them to.

I used to think that rewiring myself to celebrate achievements was vital. But I’ve changed my mind a bit. If you’ve accomplished something and the next thing you know, the Inner Critic is attacking you for all the progress you haven’t made in other areas of your life, then yeah, celebrating that accomplishment is really important, and you need to throw a party any which way you can.

But if you already feel deeply, deliciously happy about what you’ve done, I figure, just calmly, quietly, let that space open up in your heart and your life, and give that good energy to somebody else who needs it. Someday when you’re down and they’re up, they will do you the same kindness.

In other words, clasping your hands above your head in victory isn’t half as enjoyable as holding someone else’s hand, for any reason at all.

“Ignore it and it will go away” may come back to haunt you.

Hey, how’s your old bodinsky doing? Your nearest and dearest, your own flesh and blood, in the most basic sense of those words? Any weird health things show up lately? Odd symptoms? Maybe an old problem you’ve successfully ignored just stood up and demanded attention again?

In times of high stress, we tend to take a pretty tough approach to our bodies. We’ve got way more important things to worry about, so we simply expect our bodies to be there and do what we want them to do. And in a way, our bodies will simply be there for us, because we can’t walk out of them like a house.

This approach leads to things like the phenomenon I witnessed in virtually every person I knew who went to grad school: they all got sick. Really sick. As in, everything from lupus to near hospitalization for respiratory disease. Not only do grad students cut back on basic body care, they heap more and more stress on their weakened conditions – only they forget that it’s physical stress because it feels so mental and emotional.

All of us are facing a highly unusual, probably tough, year. Don’t grit your teeth and stiffen your jaw and assume your body will soldier through. Get the health insurance, whichever way you can. Take stock of what feels bad and where and when. Don’t over-surf the web and turn yourself into a hypochondriac, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that a chronic condition is normal just because it’s there all the time. Get your checkups, all of them. And if you know there’s a problem, but a doctor seems dismissive or defeated, get the second opinion, and third and fourth, until you feel confident that you’re on the right track.

This may be a hassle now, but it could be a crisis later. Smack it down while it’s small.

Today, nothing really matters.

Nothing at all.

So what will you do now that the pressure’s off?