My way of dealing with self-critisism

“Does it matter that the society doesn’t want what you do?”

No, it doesn’t matter what society wants, it’s just a giant balloon filled with opinions. It’s what you want for your inner self that matters.

We all try to connect to the world in our own ways, because the connection is important for us as human beings. I reckon the other side of this fact is that the connection between us and the outer world is also interfering and blocking the connection between us and ourselves. In order to be able to create and start to love one’s own work, it is imperative for us to connect with ourselves. I’ve found my way out of this paradox and would like to share with you; it’s like a sandwich with three layers: capability / access / to allow.

When making art, we might feel confused by the art world and all its “rules”. It is indeed confusing, especially in the definition of the word “Art”. Plus, we might also feel confused in our current life because of its complexity filled with information and opinions. And we also are confused by the critical voice in our head. How do we process all this and keep ourselves functional? A simple answer is through language, we communicate and we find a workable way. So I think we can also break the confusion through language, by connecting and communicating with ourselves.

The critical voice in our brain is actually very real, just like we talk to someone else, we literally talk to ourselves. It nests in our left brain, which is in charge of our ability to receive and produce language. The classical image I can think of to describe the critical voice is the image of angel and devil sitting on each side of our shoulders. Devil’s voice is not avoidable since we can’t just close our ears and eyes and filter out what’s coming in from outside, but my version would be: we are the angel, not someone in the middle. We have the power to talk back!

My first talk-back is capability – tell the devil that you have trust in your capability and are happy for you to have the ability to do things. When you write, that means you can write; when you play guitar, that means you can play guitar; when you walk, you are capable of walking; when you shower, you are capable of taking care of yourself.

Next is access – tell the devil that you are satisfied and grateful for having the resources to do what you want to do. If you’ve done the video practice with me, then you have access to the materials that some people can’t have or can’t afford to have.

Final is to allow. Maybe you are a confident person and believing in your own ability isn’t that hard. We normally wouldn’t doubt ourselves for doing what we do every day, because we’ve known, we’ve learned, we’ve practiced, we’ve done it so many times. Maybe we wouldn’t notice the privilege we have and how lucky we are to have access to the things we have around us, because they are the things owned by almost everyone, and certainly by everybody we know. So the final talk-back has 3 parts:

Allow yourself to trust yourself. Self-trust is a life-long issue for every single one of us and it doesn’t matter if it’s about our work, our art or our lives.

  

Allow yourself to take the opportunity in whatever you want to try and can try. If we allow ourselves to go through the same process; to know – to learn – to practice, then we will also learn to be happy with our own creativeness and our ability of learning, and we will be feeling good in life as well.

Allow yourself “time and space”. Day needs time to get bright, night needs time to get dark, life needs time to grow, our knowledge and ability needs time to form. It’s normal to feel difficulty in whatever new things that we encounter or want to learn. At this difficult moments, we need to see and recognize the importance of time and space within our learning process.

When you feel insecure and start hearing those critical voices, try cutting yourself from the outside world for a while, and talk to yourself in a sentence like this one:

 “At this moment…I can decide how I use my time and I can (make art). I have access to (art supplies). I allow myself time and space to (connect with my heart).”

Let your mind alone, and see what happens.   

– Virgil Thomson (composer, US)