Your internal Critic
Catching the Creativity Thief
When you hit the wall, develop a block, or simply feel like your creative product is no good, you may feel bad, or belive you should do something "more productive" with your creative time. There is a fine line between self-criticism in a helpful way, and self-criticism that generates defeat, reduces your confidence, and makes you want to give up.
So let's look at the first kind of self-criticism, and call it self-evaluation, instead of criticism. In fact, let's embrace that ability, the skill that allows you to see room for improvement, to figure out just what color or shadow is needed to improve your creative product, rather than putting it in the dumpster. This drive toward self-improvement can be your inside helper, and over time you can trust it to serve you rather than stop you in your tracks.
But that other critic - the one that tears you apart and makes you want to give up, that one is not your friend. It may sound like your piano teacher, the one who made you so scared that your fingers couldn't find the right notes. Or it may sound like your hardworking and stressed-out parent, who told you to come do your chores and stop daydreaming when you were caught doodling or writing poetry in the margins of your notebook. Only now that voice sounds a lot like your own, criticizing, judging, and inhibiting your creativity. That critic makes you afraid to try anything new, anything without a guaranteed outcome or the certainty of success. That critic is a creativity-killer. Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), brilliant chemist and inventor of the miner's lamp, said "I have learned more from my mistakes than from my success."