Every night sometime after 10pm – I get into this (if I am not watching TV) mental mode where my mind is ripe with ideas and I extend my thinking with new things and thought and dreams. Then I go to sleep – still thinking about some of those things and sometimes I don’t sleep and end up thinking about those ideas. Then when I wake up, the monotone banality sets in – as I walk to work – like everyone around me in this part of the world does – this so called reality tries to mess with my mind saying that – the past night thoughts were fluke and I need to get real.
This literally happens like almost regularly. As regularly as I get a Latte at Starbucks.
Last night as I was getting into my dreamy mode – I was able to stop myself and and then I realized that this critic has infiltrated into my most amazing kid like dreamy state and was trying to stop it at its root. I was surprised and as I was thinking about it – I realized that I really don’t need to ask for *permission* from my own critic. I mean it dominates the rest of day and tells me what I am supposed to do but this time was my exploration time.
As that thought settled in – I also realized that this critic no matter how useful it is for me to do day to day jobs – needn’t run my life the way he runs it. And as I saw the bigger picture – all my life has been one long list of permission list from this critic. Can I do that? Can I participate in it? Am I capable? Do I have the skills? Am I good enough? And on and on…
It also made me realize that how futile fighting this critic is. The more you fight, the more you make him stronger. The only way to escape him is to ignore him. I know it’s impossible to change my behavior over night (that statement was sponsored by my critic) but ignoring him works like a charm. If I see something painful or start to feel anxious about something I don’t know of – I just need to become aware that it’s one of those tactics of this critic.
The way to drain the critic out of you is to stop asking for his permission. Stop empowering him. You can do whatever you want to do. It doesn’t matter if you are good or suck at it. What matters is – whether we are all man enough to overcome this fake critic which got installed into our psyche when we were like kids. This hero worshipping culture enables the latent critic. Makes it stronger. But I don’t have to play by it’s rules.
I am going to to drain him by stopping to ask for permission.
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