Make Friends with the Dragon
“There is a time in every person’s education when he or she arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in her is new in nature, and none but she knows what that is which she can do, nor does she know until she has tried.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
I started writing this blog about two years ago. It was my way of confronting a demon that had been haunting me for most of my life. That demon was my inner critic, or in Jungian psychology terms, my shadow. It was the voice that was always running in the background that was telling me that I couldn’t and shouldn’t. It was a fixed mindset that said if I can’t do it well, I won’t do it at all.
Have you ever had someone in your life that you might call a “Yeah, but” person? Every time you had an idea, they responded with “Yeah, but” and proceeded to make a rational argument about why you couldn’t or shouldn’t do it. That person was inside my head like the creature who inhabited bodies in the Alien.
I’ve always admired writers and dreamed of writing a book someday, but the voice always stopped that nonsense. I was surprised to find out that I wasn’t the only one in this inner battle with myself when I attended a writer’s workshop in Santa Fe and heard Anne Lamott, a nationally recognized author, talk about her inner critic and how it was still alive and well even after she became a best-selling author. She quoted Ann Patchett, another best-selling author, who said, “I can’t write the book I want to write. I can only write the book I’m capable of writing. Every day, I look at the books on my desk and mourn my lack of talent.”
There were 500 people in that Santa Fe workshop, some published authors and some aspiring authors. Virtually all of them were fighting those inner demons. That gave me comfort that I wasn’t alone.
I’ve learned that I can’t kill my inner critic. I have to make friends with it. Julia Cameron, one of the most famous authors in the world, now in her seventies, talked about her inner critic. She gave it a name - Nigel. Nigel would show up uninvited while she was working and say something like, “That’s not very good, Julia. Nobody will be interested in that. Aren’t you too old to be doing this?” She would respond with, “Thank you, Nigel.” and continue to work.
I also learned that I couldn’t battle my inner critic alone. It was too powerful. I needed help. My friend Laura and my wife, Debbie, pushed me to the point of annoyance but believed in me enough to motivate me to gather almost two years of blog posts and put them into two books, Volume 1 and Volume 2. Breaking Age, Observations of an Octogenarian, is now available on Amazon.com.
I’m also grateful to all of you who subscribe to this blog. You are helping me tame my inner critic. I’ve learned that self-doubt seems to be a common malady among even the most accomplished people. If you have an inner critic, and you probably do, why not give it a name, make friends with it, and try to find out where it came from? Is that your mother, father, teacher, friend, sibling or someone else in your life talking to you? Uncovering the source can be therapeutic.
To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, the power which resides in you is new in nature, and none but you know what that is which you can do, nor do you know until you have tried.