depression, because it tells you that you are not good
enough.- It can make looking at yourself in a mirror or shopping
for clothes miserable because of its ability to create such
a negative view of the body. - It can take all the fun out of life with its criticisms.
- It makes self-improvement a compulsive chore because it
bases the work on the premise that something is wrong
with you. - It doesn’t allow you to acknowledge or accept the good
feelings that other people have toward you. - It makes you susceptible, and often victim, to the judg-
ments of other people.
Reading this book was a major turning point for me. I had
been trying for years to turn off my internal critic. I knew that
it was dampening my creativity and lowering my energy level,
but there seemed to be little or no good advice available. Sugges-
tions ranged from “Don’t pay any attention to the internal cri-
tic” to “Tell the internal critic to shut up!” One seemed like denial,
the other like throwing gasoline on the fire. Wasn’t there some
middle way?
The Stones had a very different approach, which worked for
me. The Stones acknowledge the inner critic that lives within all of
us (Freud called it the superego) and provide a process for trans-
forming it into an ally.
As I read the Stones’ book, I realized that the inner critic was
like a compulsive habit for me. I couldn’t seem not to listen to it.
I couldn’t shut it off. Like the drug addict who knows that heroin
is destroying him, but uses it anyway, I judged myself continually.
Why would I—or anyone—do that? It seems so stupid and
unproductive. This is the part of the Stones’ explanation that I found
unusually insightful. They believe that our internal critic is actu-
ally a misguided ally, trying to help us; rather than some evil spiritThe Creative Investor 13114-25 ware 131 1/19/01, 1:14 PM