Why are we so tough on ourselves?

Dear Creative

I am sure you know the feeling when you sit down to write and before you’ve even finished the first sentence, a little (or loud) voice pipes up:

‘This is terrible.’

‘Someone’s already written this.’

‘Who do you think you are?’

Most creatives know this voice. Give up now, it shouts. It can be loud and relentless and sometimes disguises itself as perfectionism, procrastination or telling us that we’re not ready. Mine has turned up recently as procrastination. If I didn’t approach the work, I couldn’t wreck it.

For a long time, I thought I should stop listening to this critical voice because it got in the way but some years back I changed my mind because I worked out that the problem is its timing.

Our inner critic plays an important role in the creative process. It’s our crosschecker to spot inconsistencies, improve our sentences, test our ideas for water-tightness and help us produce our best work possible. Without that part of our brain, we’d send out half-cooked stories into the world and wonder why we never hear back.

Unfortunately, this critical voice turns up on our shoulder looking at what we’re making while we’re still trying to work out what the heck we’re trying to say. It’s got the red pen out before we’re sure we’ve landed on the right sentence and questions things we’re not ready to answer because we’re still exploring the idea.

No wonder so many of us end up tangled by our own thoughts and hating our critical voice.

In this month’s Mindset Insight, I’m exploring why our brains do this, what it’s trying to do and, perhaps most importantly, how to give it the right job at the right time.