The Bohemian Sisterhood

Last week I talked about my Troublesome Gerbil. This week, I would like to introduce you to the Person that not only trains the Gerbil, but keeps it on the wheel – The Infernal Internal Critic. The idea of the critique is to make the piece or the plan better. A true critic will add what they enjoyed in the work as well as what parts have holes. They will not to take the thing apart for the sake of having power over the artist. And they won’t make the critique personal; dragging your life’s history into what is troubling them about the idea or the work. A good critique will leave you feeling thoughtful, not decimated.

The Infernal Internal Critic is about destruction. It is that little voice in your head that says “No! That’s wrong! You can’t do that! What will people think?” They can be a composite of many people: from some control-freak of an employer you once had, to your third grade teacher with the icy stare.  This voice is made up of every person who never had a kind word to say and made every problem in the world your fault. The point is, somewhere along the way, we’ve taken all of these negative voices and internalized them and molded them into the Infernal Internal Critic.

So, if you’re willing, we are going to try a little magic. We are going to fire the Infernal Internal Critic.

First thing to do is to get them out of your head and into something concrete. Draw them on a piece of paper, write their life history, or make a collage of the way they make you feel when you hear their voice, or you can do what I did, and sculpt them out of wax. The idea is to get a physical image that can be destroyed.

Now this part will appeal to your inner child because we are going to Fire our Infernal Internal Critic.  When I was a little girl, back before color TV, I couldn’t understand the concept of someone being fired from a job. The only fire that I knew about was the fire like on the end of a candle. So to be ‘fired’ meant to set someone on fire. (Okay, so it’s an extreme way to leave a job – but I was really, really young.)

So this is what I did to get rid of my Infernal Internal Critic. I began by sitting down and going into a meditative state. As I sculpted the wax, I listened to every crappy lie the Infernal Internal Critic had to say about me and my desires and dreams.  There were a couple of times that I stopped and walked away. But I wasn’t going to let it win. I was getting his pet gerbil off the wheel, once and for all.

When the figure was finished, I had him. This was the Infernal Internal Critic! I no longer associated him with any single person, living or dead, whom I may have encountered in this or any of my lifetimes.

I held Infernal Internal Critic in the palm of my hand and I told the wax figure that I couldn’t trust his assessments anymore and their services were no longer required. Once I felt I had gotten all of that influence off my chest, I set fire to it. After it was just a puddle of goo I threw it in the garbage. If you are working with a paper figure, you can flush it down the toilet.

Afterwards, I went back into meditation and hired a cheerleader/CEO who could look at things with a critical eye without being mean.

We need to have constructive critics (both internally and externally) to keep us from getting into too much trouble, and to make our dreams into reality by asking us the tough questions and helping us examine the path we intend to take. Because the only difference between a dream and a goal is the work we are willing to put into it.