Go Me!

Seth Godin has an interesting post on how to deal with one's Inner Critic. And I think that it gets at one of the more difficult parts of dealing with the tendency we have to be critical of ourselves. He's right in that we should be positive with ourselves, and tell ourselves true things that contradict the voices of our Inner Critic.

The tricky part is understanding "the nonsense the lizard brain is selling as truth." Mr. Godin says that to deal with negative self-talk one should "surround it with positive self talk, drown it out and overwhelm it with concrete building blocks of great work, the combination of expectation, obligation and possibility." Which, I think is a great idea. Of course, that's not the way I do it.

In my own internal monologue, the negative whispers my Inner Critic murmurs are not lizard brain nonsense. Instead, it's all absolutely true. What's false is the idea that it's more accurate and more refelctive of who I am than the positives. I am worthy of my own positive self-regard not because of any great works or possibilities, but simply because I am. It is my positive self-regard that renders me capable of great works and possibilities, and, therefore to nurture those things, I must nurture my positive self-regard. Of course, there are many roads that lead to Rome, and while the one that I'm on works for me, it's good to know that others are mapping out the rest of them.