Procrastination or Self Sabotage?

Is there something that you’ve avoided doing for so long that the avoidance itself is a form of self-punishment? Just like those of us who fall into cycles of abuse in our relationships with other people, we can fall into the same kind of love/hate/fear/shame cycle with the Inner Critic. If you have put off a project that you really do at your core want to do ask yourself these hard questions: Have you become addicted to the drama of self-loathing? Have you asked other people to help you finish this project? Under what perfect conditions could you finish? How can you set up those conditions to help you succeed instead of fall back into the cycle yet again?

The Inner Critic’s Inner Pocket

Nothing like voice lessons, or any activity that involves intensive body awareness, to make you aware of old Inner Critic tactics you never noticed before…

I’ve always had plenty of jaw tension, and I knew that would be one of the biggest obstacles to overcome for a great voice. Over the past few weeks I’ve been consciously walking around with my jaw dropped and back (as opposed to just slack, although I still kinda feel like a village idiot) to practice relaxing it.

And I discovered that for some reason, it’s hard for me to feel happy with my mouth open. When I’m blissed out, the drawbridge is up. And as soon as I drop the drawbridge, the first hundred thoughts that occur to me are all complaints and fears and griefs. Clearly my Inner Critic has been hiding poison in my jaw, to be released slowly into my bloodstream and soul at a slow and devastating pace.

As usual, what works is to acknowledge whatever moaning and whinging my Inner Critic feels like doing, but to keep my jaw loose so that as I get bored with the Critic and start to bliss out again, I’m practicing happiness with a loose jaw.

Give it a try: practice being blissed out with your mouth open and see if you have the same problem….

When All You Can Do is Do

I recently returned from a yoga retreat in Mexico. Beach. Sand. Sun. Yoga twice a day. Meditation. It was fantastic and perfectly timed because I hadn’t been able to meditate in a long time. In the past year every time I’ve sat down to quiet my mind, instead of entering a place of peace, I have dropped into an exhausted sleep. (Blame the infant in my house.) But that is not my only problem with meditating. The other trouble I have with it is that my monkey mind chatters constantly. I’m a writer for God’s sake, and so my imagination fires up immediately when I try to not think. The Inner Critic in all its forms comes to visit and chit chat for a while.

It occurred to me yesterday that I have finally stumbled upon an upside to fear. It’s really a form of meditation because it can quiet the mind! My daughter’s health has been challenged recently and I’ve been so scared for her that my mind simply can’t handle it. It shuts down! The Inner Critic goes absolutely quiet! And then I rely on my body to just Do. I comfort her. I bathe her. I give her medicine. I rub her back.  

Like so many people I have lost nearly everything I saved for retirement, but hey! The mind can’t even comprehend the loss and so all I can do is go to work to build it back up. The Inner Critic is totally silent. For once. Perhaps because there’s nothing to say. All I can do now is Do.

See?! I have finally conquered the art of meditation. Instead of sitting on my mat struggling to let the thoughts go, I need to quietly, simply, Do.

What has you running scared right now? What can you Do as a form of moving meditation?

Who does fear turn you into?

When you are afraid, who do you become? How does your personality change? Do you become stingy or generous, closed or open, pessimistic or hopeful? 

Are you conscious of your behavior when you’re fearful? Do you have a panic attack and lash out at the people who love you? Do you turn into a black hole that sucks your personality inward until you are not interacting with the world at all? Do you ignore your fears and allow the negative emotions to come out in other ways? When other people talk about their fears to you, have you lost your sense of generosity? Do your eyes glaze over because you immediately think of your own life instead of being present for the person in front of you? Does fear make you intolerant of other people because you are so intent on solving a problem? Do you get so lost in an emotional reaction that you are overwhelmed? Can you talk about your fear out loud? Or is what you fear all you talk about? 

If you know how you react to fear then you can begin to be conscious about how you choose to behave instead of letting the panic dictate your life. After you consider who fear turns you into now, ask yourself who you want to be when you’re afraid.

Managing the Inner Critic: Part Two

The techniques for knocking out your Inner Critic come in five categories. So if you’re battling the brutal voice of the Inner Critic every morning with your coffee as you look for a job, or procrastinate on your thesis, or continue to believe that you are not worthy of love, try a smackdown from each category every week. (Or every day if need be!)

Kindness. Kill the Inner Critic with kindness. Make sure self-care is a part of your daily routine, even if it’s just ten deep breaths before you walk out the door in the morning. When you allow yourself pleasureable experiences, you are showing the Inner Critic that you respect and love yourself. There is no room for brutality from the Inner Critic when you are feeling good.

Surprise. Keep the Inner Critic on its toes by doing new things. Try something silly like painting a tree in your garage or something scary that takes you outside your comfort zone.

Knowledge. Coming up with new ways to motivate yourself, to combat fear, and to create a life on purpose requires that you deeply know yourself. You need to know what your core values are, your passions, what things embarrass you, and how you light a fire in your belly that can help you go after a goal even when it’s difficult.

Faith. In order to really beat the Inner Critic, it’s important that you have faith in yourself. Faith that you are worthy of the life you want and belief that you can do it. This category also includes having faith in something bigger than yourself – God, your higher power, or your reason for being.

Action. The Inner Critic hates it when you actually do something to move toward your dreams. And it will put up a fight, but if you are proving your intentions to create the life you want by moving toward it with action, then you’re really on your way! Every time you say, “Yes! I did that!” the Inner Critic goes to sit in time out.

The art of smacking down your Inner Critic is really about trial and error. When your Inner Critic wises up to a particular technique so it won’t work for you anymore, your job is to come up with new ways to engage yourself in actively creating the life you want. It’s a lifelong process. But the rewards are a life lived with intention and presence. This is our chance!

Managing the Inner Critic after you’ve lost your job.

In the last few days I have been in touch with many friends and readers of this blog who have lost their jobs. While having lunch with an extremely talented friend who was laid off from a job she loved, she described how the Inner Critic had more power over her than ever before. With every emailed resume she didn’t get a response to and every minute she waited for the phone to ring, the Inner Critic leapt into the communication void to whisper in her ear.

Do any of these phrases sound familiar? “You don’t have the right experience. You’re too old! You suck at interviews! You’ll never find a job! You’re not talented enough to get a job in this tight economic market!”

If you’ve lost your job, or are a freelancer like me and have to create jobs on a daily basis for a living, then we must battle that Inner Critic minute-by-minute. My Dad always use to say, “It’s easier to change lanes when you’re in the traffic than when you’re stopped at the side of the road.” True. But what if you are stopped on the side of the road by forces outside your control? Here are some things I’ve been stewing on lately.

Get dressed. I’ve written about this one before, but it’s so important. Put on the clothes you would wear to work so you’ll feel more confident. If you’re in your pjs or sweats, it’s easy to slip into inaction. Right now? I’m in my pjs. Whoops. One moment please.

Persue every lead. How do you figure out which opportunities to take? I believe it’s my job to put myself out there in as many ways and as often as I can. What comes back to me, is not up to me. So when doors open, I walk through them to see where they lead. Even if it wasn’t necessarily the right thing for me, I always learn some valuable lesson that serves me later in unexpected ways.

Face the worst-case and plan for it. What is the absolute worst thing that can happen? You’ll lose your house? And then what will you do? Lose your car? Then how will you get around? Though your circumstances may change in unpleasant ways, there is always a way through. Sometimes you have to change your career or your attitude, or your living arrangments. But there is always a way.

Be proud of yourself. Make a list of the moments in your life when you have been most proud of yourself. What did you do? What did you achieve? How did you handle a situation? Remember those moments now.

Do something that makes you feel confident. Make another list of moments when you have felt the most confident. What were you wearing? How did you walk? What are you really, really good at?

Find allies. If you have people in your life who take energy from you instead of helping you feel courageous, then ditch those friends or family members for a while. Call up the confident people you know and align yourself with them. Instead of hanging out with people who are scared and in fear spirals, find those who are scared and are rallying themselves for the fight with optimism and hope.

Use this time for self-exploration. Last week on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, they ran a story about a 40-year-old woman who was in the financial industry and lost her job. Instead of returning to the same industry, she decided to go to school to become a chef. These stories abound during times like this. But if you view this time as an opportunity, then you will not only survive this turbulent era, you will thrive.

How about you? Let me know how you continue to smackdown your Inner Critic while you hunt for work or have to make a scary transition so we can all benefit! And please remember to do something kind for yourself every single day. This is especially important right now.

Smackdown 101

This is our most basic smackdown:

If you’re afraid of something, do it.

Always, every time.

Smackdown 102 is:

When in doubt, do nothing.

Those smackdowns might seem to conflict with each other; but when you feel afraid, that’s a sign not that you’re in doubt, but that deep down, you’ve already made the decision. Your soul knows what it wants to do; the feeling of fear is just your brain and your body freaking out because you’re carving out a new neural pathway.

So over the next day or so, keep an eye out for any moment when you feel afraid, then watch to see if you try to talk yourself out of doing it…

Pointing fingers.

When I advise stepmothers in my book A Career Girl’s Guide to Becoming a Stepmom and on my Becoming a Stepmom blog, it’s easy for me to tell them to take responsibility for themselves. I suggest that they need to stand up and be honest about their feelings, even the negative ones. But taking responsibility isn’t always easy, especially when there is fear involved. It’s really easy to blame someone else when you’re fearful or in emotional pain or angry.

Saturday morning my ability to stand up and take responsibility was tested. I get up early in the morning so I have time to myself before my baby, husband, and stepkids are up. The baby was cranky that night and so I had brought her into our bed at 4 a.m. to calm her down. When I got up at 5 a.m. I saw Eva’s daddy grab her and snuggle with her. I made a little barricade of pillows on my side of the bed.

An hour later I heard a sound that parents dread. A loud thump followed by my baby’s shrieks. I bolted up the stairs and found my husband crouched on the floor beside the bed cradling a screaming Eva in his arms. My Inner Beast roared, “What did you do?!!!” My first thought was to blame my husband. I wanted to snatch Eva out of his arms because it was his fault, all his fault. Nevermind that I hadn’t put the guard rail up on my side of the bed where she’d fallen. Nevermind the fact that I know she’s a strong roller and was probably looking for her mommy.

As it turns out, my husband’s first response was to think the same thing about me, “This is your fault!” Turns out he wasn’t awake as I had thought. He had grabbed her in his sleep and didn’t even remember me leaving the room.

Afterward, once we knew she was okay and hadn’t broken a bone or landed on her head, we discussed our reactions. We both pointed fingers at the other person in the heat of the moment, but after we calmed down and could think rationally about the incident, we admitted that both of us were at fault and would need to be more vigilent now that Eva is increasingly mobile. We each took responsibility for our part.

Instead of pointing fingers at each other, we need to work as a partnership so we can both be on the lookout so accidents like this one don’t happen again. Instead of blaming, we need to watch each other’s backs since both of us are sleep-deprived and not operating on all cylinders. It was a big lesson for us.

So how about you? In what relationships do you point fingers instead of stepping up and taking responsibility? In your marriage? At work? With a friend? Can you figure out a way to accept your part in creating the situation you’re in and use the knowledge to make it better?

Do Something Silly

Yesterday our furnace died. No heat. Okay, fine, a minor (expensive) setback. Then when my husband was cooking dinner the entire grill caught on fire. Seriously. It didn’t help that the day began with an assault by The Heavyweight. “How will I make money?” “What if something happened to one of us and we didn’t make enough money to keep our house?” “What if we couldn’t pay our mortgage?” “What if I fail?” “What if we have to move in with my parents?”

If you’ve read the About section then you know that we’ve been calling each other for smackdowns for the past ten years. In a phone call yesterday morning this is the smackdown Clare suggested for me: “Do something silly this weekend. When I talk to you Monday I want to hear what you did.”

So far this weekend I’ve played TV freeze tag and toilet tag with the kids. I’ve walked my dog singing Old McDonald Had a Farm at the top of my lungs. I’ve pretended to sing Italian opera along with Paul Potts. This afternoon I might do a crazy dance to Madonna or Kylie Minogue or Justin Timberlake. I’ll play Ghost in the Graveyard or Kick The Can. I’ll jump in a pile of leaves. I’ll use the inside of our garage as a giant canvas and paint something huge. I’ll eat a Newman O cookie by taking it apart, licking off the frosting middle part and eating each side in little nibbles so I can savor the entire experience for at least five minutes.

How about you? What silly things will you do today?

The Good News About “Worst-Case”

There’s no such thing as a “Worst-Case Scenario.”

Fear is potent and powerful largely because it makes you lose perspective. Whatever terrifying situation you’re facing is terrifying because it feels like you can’t do anything about it. It’s your worst nightmare!

One way to handle this is to be reasonable, analyze the situation, and find solutions.

Uh, right. Like that’s so easy.

You have to loosen up before you can think about finding solutions, because the best solutions don’t come from a tense and panicked mind. Fear-based solutions are band-aids, not real fixes. So even though this might sound really irresponsible, you’re going to sit down and make fun of your own worst-case scenario.

Describe the situation to yourself. Then come up with one way that your situation could be a lot worse. Then come up with another way and another way and another, until you start laughing.

(One of the best examples of this tactic is in Bridget Jones’s Diary, when she not only imagines herself a single spinster for the rest of her life, she also imagines herself dying alone. And even worse than that, she’s eaten by wild dogs, too. It can always get worse. And funnier!)