From the course: Banish Your Inner Critic to Unleash Creativity

Be self-referential and release “shoulds”

From the course: Banish Your Inner Critic to Unleash Creativity

Be self-referential and release “shoulds”

- When your inner critic pops up to protect you while you're trying to do creative work and let your ideas out into the world, you may have a sense of why me? During these moments, you may feel opposed upon and stressed. Now, there's two kinds of stress. There's negative stress and there's positive stress. First, let's look at negative stress, the kind that far too many of us are far too familiar with. Negative stress happens when we feel like a challenge has been put upon us and from an external source. The fear and sense of danger and pressure that comes from it triggers a fight or flight response. Listen to these messages that we often tell ourselves that make us feel stressed and imposed upon. "I have to make the design perfect." "I should be more creative." "I ought to work more hours." In the book, "The Now Habit" author Neil Fiore says that this kind of self-talk promotes a sense of powerlessness and self-imposed victimhood. Because it's something that we feel like we have to do and that we're taking on an imposition, I call this mind frame imposition mentality. Now, here's something important to remember. The words that we use have layers of meaning, and because of that, words have power. When we use this kind of language in our self-talk, we're giving up both our power and our responsibility in the situation. The other kind of stress, positive stress, is known as eustress. In contrast to negative stress, eustress emerges from challenges that we have deliberately taken on, making us feel motivated, confident and optimistic. From a brain and body chemistry standpoint, both kinds of stress are actually similar. Each of them produces adrenaline and both activate the attention centers and reward pathways in the brain. The difference between the two boils down to perception. We can become stress alchemists who transmute negative stress into eustress through the power of word choice. Let's look at how to switch out of imposition mentality by choosing different words to describe our situation, something that I call, say this and not that. If you find yourself sliding into imposition mentality, do like your parents probably told you when you were younger and make good choices by choosing different words. Don't know exactly what to say? When you start to recognize that you're saying things like, "I have to," swap it out and say, "I choose to," or, "I get to," or "I want to." Instead of saying, "I must," for example, "I must do this," or "I must succeed at this," you can reframe it by saying, "When can I?" For example, you can say, "When can I put the effort in to make this successful?" Other power phrases that you can use to reframe your thinking are, "I will," or "I decide." With this change, you'll start to mentally shift into a place of taking back your power because these intentional new phrases indicate both taking ownership of your feelings and also embody a full commitment to action.

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