Spend time listening to your Inner Critic. He or she is not comfortable with the risks demanded by a creative endeavor. By becoming aware of the foul jabber of your Inner Critic, you can see how your mind puts up roadblocks to creativity.
Tip 3 from Ten Tips on Creativity
Imagine your conscious mind is tuned in to a radio station run by a single disc jockey, your Inner Critic, and you have no way to turn down the volume much less turn it off. In fact, you’ve grown so used to the constant talk from the Inner Critic, you hardly notice he’s ordering you about, commenting, passing judgment and evaluating just about everything you do or say; this is all so subtle and insidious that you don’t separate out the Inner Critic from other parts of you. The Inner Critic has become you—it seems as if the only time you can escape his badgering is when you sleep. There is a reason for this. When you sleep, your conscious mind shuts down. The dream state or intuitive right side of the brain, takes over.
The Inner Critic avoids the dream state like the plague. He can’t get a foothold in a place where there is no apparent logic, where things appear as images, feelings, sounds and colors. It should not be surprising, then, that your best stories, characters and plots, come from this place of dreams, where little is known and anything is possible. The problem is how to wrest control of the radio station from the Inner Critic so that you can give your Inner Writer some air time.
Answer the following questions quickly, without thinking.
What is the color of your Inner Critic?
How big is your Inner Critic?
