Ep #43: Dream Killers: Inner Critic and Other People

Have you had a dream killed? Either by yourself or by telling other people about them? Do you have a pile of them in a corner somewhere? We learn how to make sure they don't end up in the pile before it's had it's time to become in this episode. Slayer shares her experience with her Inner Critic and tools she has gathered to continue helping her dream big and slay the self doubt that appears when pursuing big dreams. Two of the women that have had an impact on her mindset over the years, Julia Cameron and Elizabeth Gilbert lend inspiration to this episode and the links are below.

Mentioned in this episode:
Julia Cameron's Book (Amazon affiliate link):  The Artist's Way: 25th Anniversary Edition
Podcast: Elizabeth Gilbert Meets Julia Cameron - The Path to Higher Creativity

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Transcript

Dream Killers- Inner Critic and Other People's Opinions

Welcome to the Heartsing Podcast! Slayer here and I am inspired this week by feedback from several Heartsing Podcast listeners that have reached out after dreaming big and then sharing with other people who quickly shot their dreams down and put them in a tailspin of self doubt. 

One of them told her father who came up with all of these reasons she couldn’t pursue her big business dream—what about money? What about security? On and on. Another listener shared with friends her big dream plan and was told it was crazy and she could never do it. 

Can you think of a time that you were all excited about something and then shared it and BAM! You are deflated like a helium balloon on it’s last leg…

This will happen with weight loss too when you tell people you are doing it. 

They will start to offer you advice of all these things they have done to lose weight—this diet or that diet, this exercise program or that. After you just told them how excited you are about your weight loss progress and how you are doing it. 

All of a sudden you wonder if you are on the wrong path—AGAIN! Maybe you WON’T do it again. Clearly your friend doesn’t think what you are doing will work. 

And, just like that, your dreams can be smooshed! 

This episode is going to be about protecting your big dreams and making them happen!

We not only need to protect them from other people, but also ourselves.

There is self doubt brewing inside of us from years of us living in fear and perfectionism--we don’t need outside help to go down this path! 

A couple of episodes ago we practiced dreaming big and I shared my vision with you. I am comfortable doing this now because this is how I live my life. I create it, I speak it and live it. I throw my big ass crazy dreams out to you, the world and the Universe and then work to open my heart and accept the greatness that is already within me and to allow the Universe to open the doors. 

This is still a complete work in progress for me. 

I still have a ton of self doubt come up, each and every day. What has changed for me is that I have learned to better manage it, and I do this through my habit stacks, my spiritual routine if you will. 

When I meet my Highest Self each day, I am invincible, because I know I truly am. I am unperishable. There is such freedom in this, and in this I can live with more joy, love, happiness and abandon. 

I release carrying what others think—not in a harmful way or that I don’t care about others, but because I know I am listening to my soul and in daring to put my big crazy in the world I will find my path.  

I ran into a random podcast the other day with two of my favorites that have had a HUGE impact on my life—on the same podcast together! Both Julia Cameron AND Elizabeth Gilbert—Squirrel here-- my Soul got lit up when I started listening and heard the thought, “these two. Some day I will be talking about soul magic with these two”. I just got lit up again! That is my soul saying, Yes, yes, yes. The full body press of YES! 

Anyhow…these two GREATS of creativity and inspiration (Julia Cameron wrote the Artists Way that houses the Morning Magic Pages concept I talk about, except they are just called morning pages—we took the morning out to help people step away from perfectionism—any time is better than no time to journal, yes, morning is ideal, but it you miss it, do them later) and of course we all know Elizabeth Gilbert, yes? Author of Eat Love Pray that inspired women everywhere to want to run off to Europe, eat pasta and go to an ashram and learn meditation and finally to Bali where we will find love.  You remember…Julia Roberts played her in the movie-for god’s sake if you have not seen this get on it! 

Clearly, she has inspired my life. LOL. 

So, these two greats are talking about self doubt and how most people have this image that because these people are, in our eyes, successful at what they do that the doubt must be gone—they all say it’s not. 

They have just learned how to embrace the fear, how to manage that part and put their creations in the world despite self doubt, and the good old “I’m not worthy shadow”

I was like YES! This is what I’m talking about—this is what I have learned, and I will share the specific tools at the end of the podcast that I believe help make this shift. It’s not a resistance to the fear either, it’s a shift into walking with fear. Holding it’s hand, letting it now you are hear and you’ve got this. 

In this podcast, both Liz and Julia do these practices, the writing, meditations using different tools to manage the critics of the world—those within us but also those outside of us. 

I’ll share that podcast I ran into in the show notes as well incase you are a fan too—you will find this a good listen!

Since this is a spiritual weight loss podcast, I want to spend a minute on why this is all relevant—the dreaming, creating and having a routine that puts you front and center so you can MEET yourself each day, why this is so key in our weight loss quest. 

Most of us eat for a few reasons—either it’s a habit-like we don’t even realize we are eating, or we are hungry (this is probably the least used reason -haha, but seriously….) or probably the most used reason: emotions. 

We are consuming our emotions-whether it is through food, drinks, TV, Social Media, books…wherever we are going when we want to AVOID emotions. It doesn’t mean we can’t just do those things for the pleasure of them—but again, that’s seeking of an emotion. 

Sometimes these emotions may even feel like hunger.

Here’s the skinny (haha)—as we stop eating our emotions away and we learn to start listening to our body, we increase our awareness around what our mind is thinking and what our soul is trying to speak to us through our body. We increase this separation of self and step into a greater awareness each time we become the observer and don’t give into emotional eating—if we do this from the place of the scientist of our lives and not the white knuckling dieter.  

This is why I say weight loss is a spiritual journey after all—when it’s done from this place where we actually Become that new version of us and we aren’t fighting to stay the same and do different things. We must change our behavior to change our results, and as we know, behavior comes from our thoughts. 

As we increase this awareness more and more we start to hear things—

And we might think we are crazy. Most of us do. 

We have been taught to shut down that voice of creativity within us, that inner child most of our lives. Very few of us have this nourished intuition within us.

All those things we had wanted to do got shoved behind closed doors within the castle of our intellect. Behind the doors of I’m not good enough at it, I’m not smart enough, skinny enough, pretty enough…on and on. 

As we start managing our emotions and mind, and we will talk about key ways to do that and how you can start now…as you start to manage this, you will inevitably hear this voice. 

This calling within you to do something, be something more. 

When we start to listen. 

When we start to dare to believe and dream that these crazy ideas inside of us should be things we should try to do—that we should actually write them down. 

That maybe we should try it, maybe we could do it after all, or at least have some fun trying. 

When we are in this stage this dream is very delicate. 

You are daring to dream something beyond the norm of what you have told yourself and most likely others have told you is what you “should” do in this world. 

You are daring to say it’s possible for you to have a different reality. An amazing, fun, joyful existence. 

Inevitably our fear will come up. 

The fear is within us on a biological level, as our brains are efficient machines that seek rewards and work to keep us safe. 

As if that wasn’t enough to deal with we are trained that failure is bad—at school, by parents, at work…the list goes on. 

We are shown what is the “norm” and what is acceptable for us to navigate within—our responsibilities-financial, family, work, social, spiritual, religious. We are shown through our upbringing and our life experience what is acceptable. 

When you dare to dream outside this frame work and start to challenge some of these beliefs, and limiting beliefs of your own, the fear will arise. 

As you are daring to say—I’m going to do this and you haven’t yet done it, or done it before, or maybe been able to do it right, this fear comes up. 

Your inner critic comes in with all the reasons you can’t do said thing—it’s its job to keep your ego safe. We just need to embrace this inner critic and let it know it’s okay, you got this. Start to have a conversation with her, she is just wanting to protect you from getting hurt. 

You can let her know you are prepared for failure, and it’s okay,  and that know that there will be learning moments, but that is the joy of it! 

Who you will become on the other side of this dream is worth the risk. 

When you see the self doubt come up as you start to dream big, and you will, write about it in your magic pages, journal, nurture this dream within you and keep building the vision and manage your critic. 

Julia calls her inner critic Nigel, a gay interior designer from London. 

You know how I love to name things and I need a name for her. I reached out to the Heartsing Podcast Facebook community for help because I’m stumped. 

I can see her. She’s a bit older than me, pencil thin, she wears a navy blue pencil skirt and chunky blue heels. 

She runs a war room full of my Arche nemesis’s: the Wine Wench is there of course, and Fast Food Frieda, Netflix Nelly, Ice Cream Agnes, Corporate Addie and a few others still hanging around… 

She is the strategist. She is capable of seeing 1000 moves ahead in any given situation. 

The Villains love her and tolerate her smoking because she is the best of the best. She has been able to anticipate obstacles so far out that they have never had to leave the harbor of safety getting their rewards from food, wine, Netflix, overworking…these parts of me that just want to kick back and enjoy the rewards and not work to see what might be beyond this safe little room they sit in day in and day out. 

She smokes cigarettes that make her voice raspy. Her speech is clipped and short. 

She doesn’t have time to waste—she surely doesn’t understand the concept of Einstein time. She has a few watches on her wrist in fact as time rules her world. 

She lives in the world of time and space. 

This is why I have to work with her…she just doesn’t understand what is beyond her war room walls, that it is so much greater out there—the place beyond space and time. This field of infinite possibilities is not on her maps. 

So, with compassion, I approach her and let her know that sure…all of those things COULD happen, but you know what else could happen? 

And I switch to the part of my brain that dreams big and creates the vision. I open this to her and allow her to see our greatness. As I stop giving the Vilnians their rewards- I see more clearly through space and time to my inner self—that part I was talking about that knows she is invincible.

Which is funny because I drew the Pratyahara cart today, reversed. It was spot on. This is one of the 8 Limbs of yoga that we talked about on the podcast and it’s about the control of the senses. The first line in the reading of the card says “this is a time to retreat back within yourself. Letting go of any crutches you’ve used in the past to make you feel good: chocolate, coffee, social media, tv shows…”

Seriously?! The Universe could see me feeding the board room, between the Wine Wench last week and Netflix Nelly this week. Loud and clear Universe. 

Just be Still Add.  

Get In this space fear is loved and is part of the whole. 

When I do, My Inner Critic is subdued once again. She’s not as loud as she used to be. We work together most of the time now. 

However, the other day I had little sleep and missed part of my AM stack and was trolling social media and I got in some impostor syndrome—it went like this.  

I saw a mentor of mine who is growing and doing fabulous things and thought, “I am doing all the wrong things to be growing like that and I know it.” After allowing this critic to pick a part how I’m not advertising right and my funnels suck, and all the things we are supposed to do in this “Online business” world and I’m not doing them all or doing them right and will never be able to achieve success. I should just quit. “See, I told you we aren’t good enough.” On and on…oh she was on a rampage. 

I finally wrestled my body to the mat into childs pose and just sat there. 

And then I started laugh crying. 

I don’t even WANT my life to look like that, or my business. It is nowhere near my vision. 

It’s not how I define success any more. 

What that looks like to me—what this person has created and I’m sure is lighting her up—to me it looks like how I felt in my beach front home with pangs of anxiety. In fact, I get them thinking of being like that. It’s probably not how it is for her—but for me, I know it’s not my calling. 

Nope—you all heard my big vision—where in there am I HUSTLING? 

Nowhere.

I am doing yoga, traveling the world, writing, creating an organization of women who have also created ease, love and joy in their lives. We practice what we preach. We create ME time and live big dreams from our souls. 

I lead. I write. I have always had this author vision. Always. And I have always been a leader. Always. 

The idea of me writing books in exotic places or at coffee shops, or even as I sit here, in a chair at my friends house writing, THIS I love for my life. 

I also love to share spontaneously on the internet. I like to create magical processes to help people. I like to make podcasts. I enjoy helping people change their lives. I love leading women. I love creating fun out of what should seem not fun—things like habits and plans and meditation. I love to be on camera with other people sharing. I love all of this…

I don’t love all of that other stuff. Someone else can do it, it just smooshes my soul, and I’m not doing that any more. 

That’s like going back to Corporate America. 

I get to create this life…I’m going to make it full of magical days according to what feels good to me.

This happened on my weight loss journey too. 

As I shared about creating my future self and doing my LIVE video that I called “coming out of the weight loss closet”. This was when I went live and told the world I was “really” doing it this time. I was going to figure this out no matter what. 

I remember being terrified, but I was also confident in what I was doing and had all of these tools to help that I was able to step up and tell the world and not care what any one said. 

I was terrified because I was speaking this big dream out loud—to finally, once and for all figure out how to move through this weight loss quest to be thin and healthy. 

My inner critic was in the war room banging on the walls saying “Oh no we are not!!! You have never been able to do this before Addie! You have spent 40 years failing at this goal-how dare you expose our ego to all of this judgement!! You know what people will say “Oh there she goes again. “ There’s Addie Fattie still fat thinking she’s something!” 

And the Villains were in the board room were there pushing all the buttons—they wanted some booze, food, work, Netflix, anything but to tell the world they weren’t going to get it any more. 

BUT, and here’s the BUT—I was already about 7 months in on meditation, and was doing a morning routine that consisted of the magic pages, a plan and being in nature. 

My spiritual quest had started. I was already solid in this KNOWING, even though I didn’t know. This is why I felt invincible, because within me I KNEW because I had been taking all those dips in this place beyond space and time. Sounds crazy, I know, but some day you will see too, if you don’t already. 

I was still on a weight loss quest for sure, and I guess I still am, but it had turned because that part in me that is really not in me, but is of me. 

The eternal part that will be here long after ego Addie is gone. I was touching this space more and more. 

My dreamer inside was getting bigger, and bolder and she was REALLY starting daring to dream and believe. She talked to her future self and would say, “Slayer, when you are 162, what would you tell yourself now?”

And her future self said, “I would tell the world NOW, before I’m 162 what I’m doing so they can see me do it!”

And, here we are. 

Now, should YOU go do a LIVE about your big dream? Are you ready? 

Only you know, but let’s talk about going public with your Inner Child ideas or your Big Dream. I talk about them in the same breath because they often play together. 

Those big dream things are often awakened as we uncover things our inner child likes to do—those things we like to play at, have fun at, and maybe things we have long forgotten or were smooshed down by well-meaning parents, or not so well meaning, or teachers that gave us a “C” in art for a painting we thought was fabulous (yes, that happened to me and I didn’t paint for years), or we have been shown by society are nto the “norm” or the cool thing to do,. 

One of the things I did right around that time I did the Faecbook live was work through the Artists Way with my accountability group, the Radiators back in the day. Well, it ended up being me, BABs and the Shark. I uncovered so many things about myself. This is where you hear me talk about the 5 careers if you were reborn exercise—I got that from Julia Cameron, and I try to credit her as much as I can. I’m quite sure she would just be happy we are all uncovering our inner children, but buy her book anyway, it's a classic, and if it’s not on your shelf…get one, I’ll link it below. 

You know what came from that for me? Everything I am now….the Yogi (I’m a mediation teacher), a TV personality/Entertainer (Social media close enough)?, Author (in process), Public Speaker (I am…happy to speak anywhere you need inspiration, hit me up), 

I also dug up things like that art teacher the I’m sure didn’t know how devastated I was by her opinion of my art or how much work I had put in to it. I enjoy painting now, but it had been years. 

My point is this…I didn’t go LIVE and say I was going to be a Yogi, Best Selling Author, Entertainment Personality and Public Speaker...those things came later as I gained my voice, but they were still dreams and I dared to write them down. 

As I was uncovering all of this and learning how to nurture my inner child through exposing my weight loss dream…I was unwittingly putting in motion the rest of the dreams…funny huh? 

I had a enough tools in my arsenal that I could handle people doubting me. I could talk my brain out of the tailspin of self doubt and quitting, like I did the other day. Quitting by the way is the only way we fail a goal anyhow. I forget who said that but its genius. 

If your Big Dream is new, it’s tender. 

If you haven’t yet spent time airing it out and doing the work to where you have to tools to manage when the self doubt comes up, I recommend doing these things and getting them in place until you KNOW that no one else can stop you. 

No one else’s opinion will matter on your journey, but your own. 

And that you will not quit. 

You need to foster this dream, this creativity. You’ve planted the seed, now you need to water it, let it grow and bloom and then you can share it with the world…when you are ready. When you are confident enough to put your stake in the ground. 

When you ask your future self what she would do, and she says, let’s tell the world. 

Some people might say this is defeatist, that if you believe, you speak and act as if, and yes, you know I am all in on the speaking and acting as if, but you have to foster some type of belief and tools to keep yourself afloat on the dream as failures happen, because they will. 

There is more to the process than just dreaming. 

It’s this process—WHO you become that is important and translates to every other big goal or dream in our lives. 

This is why you see all these habits of highly successful people out there—habits everyone should do. We look at this and are like, “Yeah, that’s nice, but they are unicorns, that could never be me.”

And just like that—we don’t even TRY. We don’t even dare to step into our greatness, because they are unicorns, and we are not. 

There’s your Inner Critic at work again. Managing that boardroom for maximum rewards for your Villains…and to keep you the same, which as we all know if you stay the same, you are actually regressing because the rest of the world is moving around you.

So, how do we manage this Inner Critic? 

Habits of course—hahaha But which ones and what? 

Here are my favorites for thwarting off the dream killers—so you can BLOOM this dream and make it happen!!

First up, as you know are these magic morning pages. The magic pages, as I shared earlier are in the Artist’s Way and best done in the morning, we renamed them to magic pages, because there is still value if you do them at night, but Julia is pretty adamant on the morning because the world hasn’t gotten us yet so we can get out all we need to. I recently heard her talk about this and say it was like going in to the rooms in your brain and sweeping everything to the center and dealing with the pile there. Your big, loud inner critic voice is a little peep at the end of this. These are priceless. This is right up there with meditation for me and is so different than writing I do for like the podcast. This is stream of conscious writing, literally whatever comes to your brain, you just write it down. The trick is to not stop, for 3 pages, you just move the pen. You don’t THINK. You allow it to flow and see what comes up. This teaches us how to overcome that self doubt, the inner critic.

Guess what I skipped this week that put me into the imposter syndrome tail spin? Magic Pages! 

So, magic morning pages if you don’t have them in your habit routine yet are one to have on your radar. 

Second up is Meditation, but primary, of course, and you knew that was coming, but I’ll say it again. I would not be talking to you right now without meditation. I probably would have given up on this weight loss quest or stalled out again around month 4 back in 2018 without it, but also because meditation unleashes creativity. It takes us home, to the place where we already know who we are. We increasing our knowing that we are okay. It allows us to live in our light and love and embrace the Inner Critic and not let it run our lives. It allows us to look on people with love and compassion as they doubt our dreams. It allows us to go beyond time and space to that place of infinite possibilities. Anything is possible. As we practice we start to understand that we are, as Deepak Chopra says, “We are a spiritual being having a human experience. Not a human having a spiritual one.”

Think about that. 

Make a plan—Seriously take this big ass crazy dream, sit down and ask—why could I NOT do this. Come up with all the objections from the boardroom—what your inner critic will tell you, and what others will tell you. 

Get it all out—look at this and think—what will I need to learn for these to not be true? Are they true anyway or are they just BS that I can disregard? When you are done with this, you will have action items. 

Action dispels fear and as you start to step into your goal, the fear does not go away, but it has less energy. You learn to harness the fear, almost look for it as a sign you are on the right path—there is fear there? Good, you must be growing! Keep on going. 

Lastly, but maybe most importantly for this Big Dream is to find people you CAN share it with. 

We are humans after all. You will want to share this as you nurture your dream and get excited—find an environment of like minded people that will love and support your idea. You may have friends like this in your life right now that you KNOW you could tell your big crazy dream too and they would be like, hell yeah, where do I sign up?! 

There are groups out there you can join—you can find people if you don’t have them—look! You can join our group of badass witches and bitches if you dare at Namaslayer! Look for your tribe and start to cultivate an environment in your life RIPE for growth. 

Now, the well-meaning ones that will try to help you think of every obstacle of why you CAN’T do it—you don’t tell them the Big Dream, until you can listen to all their well-meaning jibber-jabber without getting angry, defensive or offended. You literally won’t care because they just don’t get it. They are playing small, thinking small and aren’t going to get it. Probably ever. It’s okay. They don’t have to. You can still love them and have compassion for them.

You can do this thing that you are feeling called to explore! 

I can promise you this—it doesn’t matter if the outcome even looks as we think it will—but it won’t matter because WHO YOU WILL BECOME in the process is the magic. 

It’s the quest that is the adventure, and we are not living life without a quest. We are not here to play small. 

To be on the hamster wheel that is our western world. 

To have our souls smooshed in glass buildings and budget meetings. 

Find your people that are ready to dream big with you and dare to get off the wheel. 

The people that dare to do something new and exciting with their lives and actually LIVE it. 

Go Dream big, live big and start working on those habits that will sustain you on the pathway. 

One habit at a time, small steps. Progress not perfection. 

You got this my witches and bitches!

Until next week!

Slayer out!

xoxo