Put Down The Red Pen & Pick Up The Crayons

We sit with the link between creativity and the inner critic, then trace how judgment and criticism get installed and become a habit that shuts down trying. We reframe resilience as the skill of dropping harsh self-evaluation so learning, agency, and encouragement can lead the way again.
• childhood roots of self-sabotage and the inner critic
• criticism as a learned habit that spreads to self-talk
• interpretation as the source of meaning and distress
• judgment as the antidote to creative work
• why we assume others track our failures
• emotions and body “vibrations” that stop action fast
• the risk of sharing dreams too early
• approval seeking as lost agency and authority
• “I am enough” plus gentler alternatives for practice
• unworthiness as familiarity and habit reinforcement
• encouragement as the opposite of criticism
• learning and repetition as the path to skill
• the crayons visualization for safe experimentation

Transcript

Rainy Lakeside Setup And Theme

SPEAKER_01 0:10

We are on the line.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Surrounded by lots and lots of water.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Lots and lots of water. The lake has crept up onto the shore. The dock is just barely above the water. Some might even say it's in the water.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Yeah. We'll see.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

And it continues to rain.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Whatever we get, we get a lot of.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Yeah, that's true. It's like the swing of the pendulum goes right over. Tons of snow, tons of rain. Yeah. Yeah, so today we're we're exploring, muddling through this idea of creativity. And pair that with the idea of success and failure. How that can stifle creativity.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

And where you can find resilience.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Resilience for success? What do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

However you want to judge it. Getting over your own judgments, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

That's resilience, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Yeah, I suppose, yeah.

unknown 1:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Resilience. Getting over your own judgment.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Yeah. So, you know. Uh usually when and and you know, I can speak for myself as well, but when we're working with clients who are sort of butting up against this feeling of not being creative, or they have a lot of creativity and then they pull back from it. It's usually, you know, tied to something from their childhood that made them feel like they couldn't do it, or they weren't supported in their creative senses, or maybe they were not enough. And so this idea, and I think you know, we we say these words self-sabotage. What all their words make sense for that. Self-sabotage. There's another one that's coming to mind, but it it's on the tip of my tongue, but I can't remember it. But it's this inner critic that shuts us down. And the idea that sort of comes to mind is as I was writing a little bit this morning about it, is if we didn't have somebody either standing up for us or encouraging us when we were little, how do we find that now? You know? And if we can't, then sometimes what we see is this pullback from creative endeavors. We get really excited about it, and then we start shutting ourselves down, looking at our creative creative endeavor with criticism. And this can be across the board, it's not just art. Maybe it's writing, music, art, but really anything that we are creative with in life. We can even be creative at work, right? But sometimes if we're not supported in that creativity, we can turn on ourselves, or we can even just turn on ourselves and pull back from it. So we're sort of, yeah, today we're exploring this idea and what we can do about it, how we can feel better.

How Criticism Gets Installed Early

SPEAKER_00 4:45

There's so much about the way we think. But there's so much about the way that we think that we take on from others. It's it's a funny thing. This is the machinery we use to interact with the world and respond to the world, and it gets built early in our lives, and there are certain practices that we mistakenly think are helpful. Practice of criticism, I think, is given to us all with a sense of if you're not criticizing yourself, you're not getting better, and if you're not getting better, you're not good enough. And then we experience being criticized, and then we engage that practice on others because it just feels better to criticize others and to be criticized. And then we begin to criticize ourselves, we take over the job of criticizing ourselves. So it's kind of like a step, you know, being criticized and being told that that's good, and that's how you're going to be your best self somehow. And then you engage that process with others and you you see yourself as understanding better than they do how they should do what they do. And that gives you the habit of doing it to yourself. And then when we're self-critical, we kind of go overboard.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Yeah, it almost becomes this spiral into a void that we we almost want to sit in. It's like this addiction of darkness that we just wrap ourselves in.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Oh, no, I'm depressed. I'm sorry. No, it's okay. No, the the I it is that it's it's you know, the we start, you know, as always, if we want to have a better experience. It we have to remember that it's about what we're interpreting, how we're interpreting it. That our life is really just a massive interpretation. Whatever's going on is is nothing. It has no meaning except the meaning we put on it. And most of the time it has absolutely no meaning about us. You know, I've I'm sitting here uh looking out the window while we're talking, and then the rain surges and it gets really big, and it's really easy for me to then go, oh my god. And then I'm like, what am I oh my god about? Rain has nothing to do with me. It's just it's just rain, and it's gonna just do its thing, and that's where the water's gonna come from. So what's the big deal? And then it's well, it isn't what I want, and you know, well, what do you want? I don't know what I want, I just know I don't want that. You know we get these mental critical views of things, confused that somehow that things mean something about us, confused that some things need to be addressed that can't be addressed. Just confused by this early programming, you know, it's why so much of our work feels like working with with a child.

SPEAKER_03 9:06

Yeah.

Judgment As Creativity’s Off Switch

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Because as a as a child, we take on these mental habits. As an adult, we can sit here and decipher and and dissect and break it down and get a sense of, you know, what is this that's going on inside me? But you know, if I had to isolate two things that are absolutely useless and are deeply embedded in the way we think, it would be criticism and judgment.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

And judgment is the I'm gonna say it in a weird way. Judgment is the antidote for creativity. If you want to stop judgment, if you want to stop creativity, just apply a little bit of judgment. If you want to completely put the brakes on any creative thinking, doing, being, just add a little tiny dose of criticism, right? Just add a little dose of judgment, and next thing you know, the creativity goes away. And that's really what we do to ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 10:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Like let's let's own that. I mean, if we don't own it, there's no hope of changing it.

SPEAKER_03 10:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Right? I can spend all day long and think about the criticisms I received from my parents or from my teachers or from the people in my life. I can sit here all day long and decipher and and and relive all of the moments in my life when someone I loved was critical of me and all of and then you know come to the conclusion, well, that's the way I am. That's why I am the way I am. It's not my fault. But what you're left with is, what are you gonna do about it?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

I think it's important to see its origins, but what are you gonna do about it? Sit in it, live in it, let it take over, let it grow. You know, I think it's so important to remember that when a child is subject to constant criticism, they will eventually do nothing. When a child doesn't think they have what it takes, they will eventually do nothing. And I think that that's you know, that that is a wonderful explanation for so many of the phenomena that we see in our society, where children spend hours and hours and hours playing video games, and the successes that they have at video games are the only real positive reinforcements that they have.

SPEAKER_03 12:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

The time they get to spend with friends playing video games is the only positive human interaction that they think they have, because everything else is about reminding them that they're not good enough.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Wow. Never thought of it that way.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

That's why we call it reframing.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Yeah, in the chat, yeah, this reminds me of when you spoke of why some messages get in and stick and others we ignore when someone with authority tells us something, we accept it. So yeah, going all the way back to childhood. This can happen as an adult as well. But usually our programs are met as a child, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Well, as an adult, they tend to get reinforced.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

And we tend and this is the downside, is we tend to reinforce them on ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 13:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Right? We've taken on that voice of criticism. We've taken on that habit of judgment.

SPEAKER_03 13:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

And it's the criticism and the judgment that reduce us to feeling like a child who failed.

SPEAKER_03 13:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Yeah. And I I think this idea of failure and success, as I was writing this morning, I I think, you know, these are my thoughts about it. And I would ask people listening. I want to I want you to think of the last time. And I bet you you can't really think of the last time, but I want you to try to think of the last time that you thought about someone else's failure in life.

unknown 14:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

I bet you it's really hard to think about that. Like, we don't go around thinking about other people's failures. I don't think. I'm painting with a wide brush here. But think about the last time that you thought, well, that person is really successful. That person is having a lot of success. Wow. And I think we can think about the last time we thought about that, maybe, because most of us strive for success of some sort. And it's different for everybody. But we don't go around striving for failure, so we just don't really think about it. If it's in front of us, like we're watching the news, we're judging, you know, uh watching TV, watching reality shows, maybe we're judging. But we don't go around thinking about other people's failures. But we certainly think that others are thinking about our failures. Right? We think that some random person somewhere is thinking about how we failed. So we we perpetuate this idea or this feeling, this judgment on ourselves when it's not even really there. So then we box ourselves in saying, we failed. I failed at doing this, I failed that. And and then, you know, spiral.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Yeah, I don't even think that they're active thoughts. Yeah. I think one of the things that we we could spend more time on. You know, thoughts can lead to emotions. Emotions seem to be feelings. And feelings tend to be in our body. And our subconscious mind is so smart and so capable that it can jump right from recognizing a situation as similar to past situations and drive you immediately into that feeling in your body. And that feeling in your body is like a vibration. And we tend, I think, we we quickly go into vibrations. And really what we're trying to do as hypnotists is break that that speedway, that pathway, that incredibly quick way we can go from an event into a feeling and a vibration that for many of us it just incapacitates us.

unknown 17:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Just stops us cold.

Breaking Fast Emotional Spirals

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah. Yeah. In the chat here, I I like this one. I struggle with this one. The biggest dream killer is telling someone what your dream is before you live it. I think there's a lot to be said about that, you know. When it's almost like when you tell somebody about your dreams, it's like you're handing it over to them for interpretation of whether or not you should do it. And you don't realize that because you're excited in the moment of telling them. You know, look what I'm doing. And and now it's almost theirs to interpret how they would be in your situation. And you don't know if that's that's good or bad, right? And then they're gonna throw back at you what they perceive, and you don't know what that's gonna be, right?

When Sharing Dreams Backfires

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Yeah, with others, you can be really confident that most of us have in some way or another developed this predisposition to evaluate and move to criticism and judgment. And again, it's you know, it was presented to us as a as a mental habit and as interpersonal habit. It was presented to us as something that was supposed to be considered helpful. This is what you need. You need some criticism, you need to change constructive criticism, you need to do better. And that's the natural pattern, I think, for a lot of people. And you know, I I think that let's start with the first thing to do. Somebody comes to you and says, you know, I've written a story and they want you to read it. Where do you go? What do you do? Do you take out a pen and begin the process of editing editing?

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Or or do you sit back and enjoy? I've been one what I've learned to to address my own predisposition to be a critic is to avoid those situations. Hillary knows this. Here, will you read this for me? No, I won't. I won't. I'm not gonna do that. What do you what what are you expecting if I read that?

SPEAKER_03 20:10

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

I think that there is our own ability to recognize in others, just as it's easy for us to recognize in others the things that they're not doing well. It's also easy if we want to recognize in others that beautiful child. I think it's possible for us to say, I don't want to engage in a process of feedback and criticism with you, because I don't think that it will be encouraging to you. You know, it's a I'm constantly reminded of this study that they did, and I've really got to get the details so I can communicate it better. A study where in a classroom, instead of giving children critical feedback on their work, teachers just simply focused on observation and encouragement, right? I think that we are in the habit of seeking approval.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Yeah. That came up in the chat just a minute ago. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Yeah, we're in the habit of wanting others to tell us we're okay.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

And another's story. Another person's words saying we are or are not okay are meaningless.

SPEAKER_03 21:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

We put a lot of meaning on them, but they are meaningless because whatever they think they know does not determine who and what we are.

SPEAKER_03 21:56

Yeah.

Approval Seeking And Being Enough

SPEAKER_00 21:58

That is something. Really, at best, only we can know about ourselves. And so another person who can't know whether I'm a great guy or I'm a pain in the butt guy. They really can't know that. They can only, you know, offer me their experience in that moment or in the moments that they've collected. And I can then find myself making my own internal judgments about myself based on what those others say. And I can get in the habit of thinking that I'm only good enough when there are enough people out there telling me so. And that, in many respects, is kindergarten for most people. That indoctrination that I'm surrounded by my peers and I'm surrounded by authority, and my goodness or my badness is going to be determined today by those around me interpreting me. And there's the there's the bad habit, right? There's the habit that makes its way into our life as long as we don't observe it. For as long as we don't see it as a thing rather than an embedded method of living and experiencing. What if you just spent your day being encouraging?

SPEAKER_02 24:01

To yourself, others? All of it. I am enough. I am good enough. I am free of others' opinions.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Heck, I am free of opinions. My own or others.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

If they struggle with it, what would you pull back to?

SPEAKER_00 25:38

I don't know that I'd ever compromise on the truth. I would acknowledge that as truth and say anything else isn't true.

SPEAKER_03 25:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

You could pull back and say, I'm trying to be good enough. But that's not true.

SPEAKER_03 25:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Because how could you ever be anything other than good enough?

SPEAKER_03 26:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Except in the mind's interpretation. Which is oftentimes just out of control and crazy. I don't know what another word is. It's just it's not helpful.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

You know?

SPEAKER_01 26:28

What I use with clients when they have issues with state stating it that precisely is I'm on a journey of knowing how good enough I am. Knowing my worth. I'm on a journey of knowing.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

I like that because I think learning is something that opens the door for us. To think about learning is to say, well, I might not be good at it now, but I can be. For me, the technique I use is I say, think of somebody that is good enough. Think of another person that's good enough. And then I go further and I say, Well, can you think of anybody that's not good enough? And usually the answer is no. And I say, Well, then why aren't you included in that group? You know, when it comes to things like good enough or self-love, I think that we're all very good at loving others. I think we're all very good at supporting others, at least the ones that we love. And we want to be, and we we try to be. And we're just not good at doing that for ourselves. And so to be able to recognize good enough or lovable in others, any others, is the beginning of recognizing it in ourselves. It's also the beginning of finding the self-talk which was really given to you by somebody else. Self-talk that is critical, the self-talk that is judgmental. And that's the stuff that that's the stuff that creates the the vibration, the mood, the spiral.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

Yeah.

Why Unworthiness Can Feel Safe

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Yeah. And it's it's spiraling up or spiraling down, hopefully up. I can say that, you know, when I spiral up, I feel it at the body level. I feel like my body's just sort of humming, I guess is a good word. It's not so much vibrating, but it's just humming almost like every cell is like, yay! But why, you know, I I wanna I don't know if I'm derailing us here, just if I am, just we can move to another subject. But why do we like to sit in unworthiness?

SPEAKER_00 29:52

It's a habit.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Is it safety? Is it an idea of I want to wrap this blanket around me and sit on the couch and not feel good about myself because I think there's comfort and familiarity.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

I don't think that sitting and feeling sorry for yourself is good or it's healthy or it's even useful. But it can certainly be a habit. And habits get reinforced, they get really hard to break out of. You have to literally deliberately recognize that the habit's not helpful and go out of your way to push yourself into something else.

SPEAKER_03 30:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

And then you've got to practice that and practice that and practice that diligently, right? You know, being vigilant to that. And then it takes, you know, thousands of repetitions for that to be the new habit. I I think that we all have comfort in our habits. And breaking out of habits, you know, people use that old cliche of the comfort zone. And breaking out of the comfort zone.

SPEAKER_03 31:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

I think that to say today to yourself, I reject all concepts of criticism. I see criticism as a useful, useless thing. I I there is no usefulness in criticism of myself or anyone else.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

I think that's a powerful thought. So what's the opposite? What's the opposite of being critical?

SPEAKER_04 32:20

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

I guess it's either well, is it just not doing any any criticizing or is it placing new words in your mind?

SPEAKER_00 32:38

I think of encouraging. If the net effect of criticism is to cause people not to try, then you want to come up with something that's going to cause people to try.

SPEAKER_02 32:51

Yeah. Go for it. Yeah.

Encouragement As A Learning Engine

SPEAKER_00 33:01

I think to be encouraging, one of the most powerful things to be encouraging with is the concept of learning. You know, I I I think of, you know, we're in the in the habit now of writing. And I think of a book by Stephen King, probably the most prolific author of our time. And he talks about in his experience a turning point when he had been submitting stories to magazines and books for literally years and amassing his rejection letters, which you know, authors joke about amassing their rejection letters. He received the standard because when you submit this stuff, what you get is a standard form letter that says, thanks for your submission. We encourage you to submit again. Thank you for your interest in our magazine or whatever. And they get that letter. So he received one, one of the standard rejection letters, only this time, down in the corner of it, was handwritten, you're on to something here. Keep going. And he said that was like a turning point for him. Like uh rocked his world. This is the beginning of something good, right? I think encouragement, finding a way to not offer approval so much. You know, you you take away, you know, I think one of the biggest problems with school is that teachers take away your own individual authority over yourself, your own, we use the word today, agency, your own belief in your own ability to judge and evaluate and respond in a useful, helpful, meaningful way. That we we hand over to others through this process of approval, seeking approval. We hand over the authority to others, and we we lose our own ability to evaluate ourselves. And it's not so much that it isn't there, and it's not so much that we don't we can't look at something and say, oh, this is the best I've done yet, right? Or I really like this about what I've done here, right? Or I'm getting better at this. We we we can even know that and still kick in the inner critic. Encouragement can overcome impatience. You know, I don't want to learn how to do this, I want to know how to do this. I don't want to go through what it takes to get good at this. I just want to be good at this. And if I'm not good at this, I'm gonna quit.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Yeah, after the first try. That's sort of a joke, you know, like try, give it a go, you know, strum the guitar, play a chord, knock it at this, never pick it up again.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

In hypnosis, we use it all the time. I mean, it's just a standard thing. I don't know why every hypnotist isn't using it. But you know, as soon as a client closes their eyes and goes even a little bit into trance, you just automatically say, Oh, you're good at this. Because they are they're natural at it. Every human being is. There's not a human being that that's not true about. Now, maybe today they might be caught up in their active mind and be observing everything that's going on and be a little bit afraid. But just the kind words of, oh, you're good at this, you're gonna get really good at this. By the time we have our second session, you're gonna be very good at this. Right? It's just simple encouragement.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

Yeah. And it's not like you're blowing smoke, it's for real, like they are good at it.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

The truth is, you know, I love this old saying from a movie, you know, what one person can do, any person can do. Yeah, and that's that's really the truth of it. Yeah, I mean, we all have basically the same equipment to work with. So, hey, you know, you got a body, you got a mind, you know, most of us have the same stuff. I can't say everybody, and I'm not trying to be dismissing those that have some other situation, but I think that what one person can do, any person can do most of the time, and we can we can embrace that. We can make that our standard, we can make that a truth. So, what one person could do, any person can do, and yeah, my first painting was yeah, it looked like something out of grade school art class. Yeah, but you're learning. You're learning, and everybody starts where they are and ends up where they want to be. Everybody starts where they are and ends up where they want to be.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

Yeah. I think it's hard in this world where people only share the the pieces that that are really worked on, or after years and years of going through it, trying. And so you see the end result of where they are now, but you don't see the years and years of practice that got there. And so you just judge yourself against that, which is not helpful.

Becoming Your Future Self On Purpose

SPEAKER_00 39:20

Well, and there's that word judgment, criticism and judgment, they're absolutely useless practices. They don't lead to anything good, ever. Ever. They're not supportive, they're not encouraging, they're in no way helpful in trying to become anything. And I suppose in its simplest form, from the moment of birth, you know, becoming is what we're about. And it never ends. At some point or another, we start to choose what we want to become.

SPEAKER_02 40:21

Let's hope we decide to choose what we want.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

I I think I think there's expansion. Let me sort of flesh out this idea. So I think that when we have an idea and a and a choice of who we want to become, there's a sort of a letting go of the past that happens there. And you you take this on for yourself, and society and authority are not molding you any longer. Does that make sense?

The Crayons Exercise For Creativity

SPEAKER_00 41:05

It's a beginning of resilience. Yeah. Resilience, self-reliance. I like that those words sound similar. I'm relying on my own kindness to myself. Yeah, in hypnosis, we would take you back, and we would find those moments when you took on those methods of criticizing yourself and judging yourself. In hypnosis, we would take you back there, and we would probably remind you that as a child, as a little one, how could you possibly really do anything wrong? Everything is an experiment at that stage, everything is trial and error. You're not even good at getting your own big toe in your mouth, right? You're learning how to just work the body and and learn how to walk and learn how to talk, which are things we just take for granted. Nobody ever gets, you know, praised for boy, you walk well. You know? So I think that that when we take it back to those moments where everything is learning, it's really easy to give up on the judgment and the criticism. It's really easy to just allow. And so the the analogy I use a lot in meditations and in hypnosis with people is imagining a little child as young as they need to be to have their first box of crayons and an endless supply of paper. And they're beginning the process of experimenting. What the heck is this? This is a crayon. They don't even know how to hold it, they're not even sure the names of the different colors yet. They're just playing. And to do anything other than to tell that little one over and over. That's beautiful. That's beautiful.

unknown 43:59

Keep going.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Going. You just wouldn't tell them anything other than that's beautiful. Keep going. I want more.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

And you get the client to like imagine that.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

Yeah. Well, once they see that, then they see and feel the energy that we all deserve to have when we're trying something new.

SPEAKER_03 44:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

And then they see themselves being encouraging to themselves as they move through new experiences.

SPEAKER_01 44:40

Instead of getting in trouble for coloring outside the lines.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

Well, criticism is that thing that suggests you have to do everything right.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

And that's the process that keeps you from acting at all, from doing anything. Eventually, you know, we we won't we won't even experiment. We won't even try new things because we know we won't get them right the first time. Well, who would? And that's okay. Oh, I think the first time. It's it's okay. Yeah. How could anybody, you know, just do something perfectly the first time they've ever done it? It's not going to happen. And we still need to be free to try.

SPEAKER_01 45:33

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

Resilience is getting over your own self-criticism and your own self-judgment and unreasonable expectations that you might have of yourself to be very good at something first time you do it, or even the tenth time you do it, or even the hundredth time you do it. Now, if you're going to count, put 10,000 times out there on the horizon and work towards getting your ten thousandths in. And there's a point to evaluate, without judgment or criticism, how you're doing.

Final Takeaways And Goodbye

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Yeah. All right, everyone. Thanks for hanging out this morning as we move through these topics. Hope everyone has a wonderful day, and we will see you later.