The Wonderful Words for Wednesday are ‘Self Talk’
ALL of us talk to ourselves in our heads all day long. If you don’t think you do, you’re just not tuning in.
Self talk can be negative, such as, “Who do I think I am, I’ve got nothing to offer anyone.” etc. etc. etc. and it can be positive, for example, “I can do this, I’m not going to give up.”
Sometimes self talk is something someone said to you at some point in your life that you believed even if you didn’t want to and it pops up over and over and over, “You’re not good enough”, “You are not worth anything”, “Nobody will ever love you”, are just some examples, but these come in endless forms.
I’ve heard people describe the negative self talk as our ‘inner critic’. That voice is in there trying to beat us down, convince us to not try new things, and to prove that we are not worth love and support from others. That voice is a BULLY to the largest degree, and we must always be at the ready to recognize that voice for what it is and shut that bully down.
Story Time
I recently took a class from a wonderful human named Anne Lafollette about how to create simple repeat patterns in Adobe Illustrator. It was sooooo good I had to share it with others, so I wrote an entire BLOG post about it and then shared it with her. She in turn actually went and looked at my website and instagram etc. and contacted me and asked if I would accept an offer to be featured in one of her Wednesday Live sessions where she features other artists. Of course I jumped at the opportunity and said, “I’d be HONORED!”.
THIS is when my inner critic (aka The BULLY) started up. I’m having to be very vulnerable in sharing this, but I think it’s important that we share this piece with each other as I feel it reduces The Bully’s power.
I’ve noticed a shift in the art business world where we actually talk about this side of things openly and this is SUPER DUPER helpful to me. It’s important to know, that even the people we look up to as the most successful also deal with the Inner Critic constantly. Nobody escapes The Bully’s attempts at derailing us.
So, here is what “The Bully” started whispering in my ear loud and clear: “You should cancel this interview, you have nothing to offer, you’re doing nothing worthwhile and the interview will be useless to anyone who watches, ” and on and on and on. I started to let those thoughts snowball in my mind and I ALMOST cancelled or at least reschedule when I did have something worthwhile to offer.
BUT, because I’ve heard so many others talk about this inner critic, this big fat BULLY, I recognized it. I suddenly realized that I was letting that bully, bully me! Right at that moment, I stopped that critic in that critic’s tracks and said, “NOPE! Not today!” and then I turned my back to that Bully and started walking in the other direction.
I turned that thought into a question to myself, “What DO I have to offer?” and it turns out what I have to offer is transparency of where I’m at in my creative business endeavor and in my current phase of life. When we are open and honest about where we are in our endeavors and phases of life, it helps others who find themselves in similar places. It helps us all feel less alone.
It took a while before we were able to get our schedules together and actually record the session on Zoom, but we found a time and recorded our session yesterday. Guess what? It was so much fun! Anne is gracious and kind and loves to give others a platform to share what they are doing. She believes we ALL have something to offer each other. It was an absolute delight chatting with her.
In Conclusion
You’ll have to wait to see the session when it is all edited and ready, but as soon as it is, I’ll share it!
I’m still fighting some negative self talk, but I’m getting faster at recognizing that Bully and shutting that Bully down.
If this resonated with you, I’d love to hear how you are shutting your inner critic down, just comment below!
Kimberly Snider, Virtuoso, signing off