Press Pause on Your Inner Critic

I was working on my blog and had a flood of distracting critical thoughts. “Why’d you choose that word?” “They’re not gonna understand it if you say it that way.” “You should say _________ instead.” I got so frustrated editing while typing, even though I know better than to do that. I just kept listening to that annoying inner critic. I was backspacing and rewriting ’til I was so frustrated I just closed the tab.

Even as I’m writing THIS, those same, annoying, “You should say…,” “Don’t use that word,” “That should go at the end,” critical thoughts are present. For a second, I was listening to them automatically and editing as I wrote. Hence the writing tip at the end of this post.

What I’m realizing right now is that we have to learn to treat those thoughts like a mom with a chatty toddler. The mom saw the butterfly go by and knows that the child wants to tell her about it, like the other 14 monarchs they’ve seen that day, but she’s in the middle of a serious conversation. She feels the toddler tapping on her arm and hears them saying, “Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom….” but she knows that what they want can wait.

We need to develop an inner, “Just a second, Honey,” and keep our creativity flowing. Interrupting thoughts can wait. We get to stay in flow and double back later. When we keep stopping to engage with that distracting inner voice, the quality of our work gets watered down.

Since today’s original blog got scrapped, I got to see how important it is to be aware of this tendency to listen to the persistent distractions and not follow the path of intuition. Major shifts begin with simple awareness of the little choices we make that are often trajectory-shifting.

Let’s begin to pay attention to how our thoughts guide us toward, and away from, following intuition. It’s in these little choices we make internally—our choices of what we will focus on—that guide our emotions, decisions, and our lives.

Marlene Dillon Empowerment Specialist#Proud2BNaturalMe

Writing Tip: Don’t edit while you’re writing. Your best work will come straight from inspiration. Write from your heart. Just ignore that voice and let it flow. You can edit later. Just get all your thoughts out, then make a copy, and edit the copy. Never edit your original. (See. Sometimes the interruptions are beneficial… but they can wait.)