The Power to Rise: How to get free of your inner critic (it’s not how you think)

All of us have the power to rise, to feel the sun on our faces, to raise our arms and connect to the Divine Connection and Glory of it all.

I’ve been carrying an inner critic on my shoulder for longer than you might think. Sometimes I’ve barely felt its weight. Other times it’s been a stone from a rock quarry, sharp edged and bulging with quartz. The critic can change shape at any moment. Sometimes it becomes a tall man with a long beak for a nose. He jumps off my shoulder and he wags his finger at me and says, “How dare you think you can do that?!”

For the longest time I cowered when he spoke. Felt my courage descend down my throat like an ice cube gone too far. Felt my voice go hoarse and rattle like gravel in a metal wheelbarrow when I tried to talk back to him.

He’s tried to stop me from so may things. He’s agreed with people who told me I wasn’t good enough. He’s whispered his discouraging nothings day in and day out, until they’ve became grating like a busy signal on a telephone line. Something you can tune out a little but not completely.

Today I invited him inside the walls of my journal. I opened the door and he lumbered in. This time, his upper form was that of a man. His lower half was that of a lizard, with webbed feet and claws and a long green tail with brown spots and heavy scales. He squatted in a corner while I lit a fire in the fireplace.

In the beginning we didn’t speak. He gazed at me with eyes that had coal black slits for pupils. After many heartbeats and no words, his eyes softened and his lizard limbs became those of a man. And then those long limbs grew shorter, and he began to shrink.

I offered him a chair. He shifted, his back slumping forward. He licked his lips and asked for a glass of water. I brought one to him. He told me he was there to protect me from danger. If he kept me from going out into the world, I couldn’t get hurt. And the only way he knew how to do that was to tell me, You’ll never make it. It will never work. Untold masses have tried to write something of consequence, and they failed. Who do you think you are, anyway?

I told him I couldn’t stay a boy forever. I told him I have boys of my own. He could come and watch, but I needed him to know that I had this. It was my turn to go out and fall down and practice getting back up. How else would my own boys learn?

He nodded and sipped his water. I took a chair and sat next to him. We sat in front of the fire, feeling warm and listening to the Rice Krispy-crackling of the burning logs.

Before the log burned down to embers, he told me he had to go. He said he’d try to hold his tongue, but that it wasn’t always easy for him.

“I understand,” I said. ‘It’s okay.”

He nodded. He walked out the door and the room in the journal melted between the blue lines of the page, and then all that was left was paper and a pen lying next to it.

Wherever you are, whatever you feel as your flaws, you don’t have to be afraid. You can invite your critic inside. Speak with it. Allow it to be heard. Allow its true nature to become something you understand. And then, perhaps you’ll have a little more peace. Perhaps you’ll feel less at war with yourself.

And that’s when you can rise, truly rise with the sun, standing up tall without the weight of your doubts making you second guess your purpose.

Originally published at: The Power To Rise on Copy For Originals