Speaker #0Have you ever started a new creative venture and just relentlessly beat yourself up every single time you made a mistake? Did it help? I can speak from experience in saying it has never helped me. And in fact, I think it's often held me back. So today I want to explore with you an alternative to self-criticism when releasing a new creative project out into the world. Hello, and welcome to Unleash Your Inner Creative Minisodes. My name is Lauren LaGrasso. I am a Webby Award-winning podcast host. producer, singer-songwriter, public speaker, and creative coach. And every other week for the rest of summer, backed by popular demand, I will be coming to you on the podcast to give you bite-size unleashed episodes. Each show will contain actionable advice about creativity, working toward your dreams, and self-development. They are full of tools you can implement into your life immediately, so let's get into it. Today's topic is how to move from I suck to I'm so excited to improve. And boy, is that a perspective shift. So I want to share with you how I came to this. As many of you know, I have wanted to and been dabbling in public speaking for a really long time. And now I am fully making it a focus in my multi-passionate creative career. And in the past few months, I've had like half a dozen public speaking gigs, which has been amazing. And something really interesting has happened with this new venture. That is I have not been beating myself up when I make mistakes or see where I could be better. In fact, I felt excited about the idea that I could improve and thrilled to figure out what the journey will be to that. And that is such a difference, let me tell you. With this podcast, with my music career, 100% with my acting career, every time I made a mistake, every time I wasn't where I wanted to be. Every time I had a minor infraction with what my self-critical voice's perspective was on where I should be, I received a lashing. And I just have to tell you this experience of instead of saying, you suck so much, why aren't you better? You should be better. Instead of saying that, saying, oh my gosh, I see your potential. You have the talent to do this. And this is where you can improve. And let's see how we can do that. It makes a major difference in how much you enjoy the creative process and how fast you grow in it. So I'm very lucky that this finally kind of, I'm going to say naturally, but it's really through a lot of therapy has finally come to me. And so I want to share with you a way that you can start to do this. If you are still very much in a self-critical phase in a creative project you're doing, or just like in your life, how you can shift from, I suck to. I can't wait to improve. So the first thing to do is to recognize that you are stuck in a self-critical voice. So if you relate to any of the things I've been saying, you may be stuck in a self-critical voice. If you find that that's you, here's the first little tool that I would use that I learned from my therapist. Ask that voice what it wants. I know this sounds weird as fuck, but tune into yourself. See where that voice lives in your body. Take a deep breath that like brings you from your head into your body and ask that voice, hey, what do you want from me? What do you want for me? When I ask that voice what it wants, what it typically wants is for me not to give up and for me to achieve my dream, which is a beautiful intention. However, The approach does not resonate with me of telling me that I'm the worst and that I should be doing better and that I've never achieved anything in my life, which is a recurring thought pattern that can happen when I'm stuck in one of these self-critical moments with my creativity. So once you find out what that voice wants for you, you can thank it for caring and then suggest another way. You know, thank you so much for not wanting me to give up, for wanting me to keep going. That way you're talking to me doesn't actually work for me. And something that might be helpful is if you tell me you believe in me and here are the ways you can improve and I'm excited for you to improve. And then once you do that, look at what areas of desired improvement come up and start really thinking about them. Ask yourself, how can I get there? Then start working on that by looking up other people who have done what you're trying to do and who are doing those things that you think you need to improve on well by practicing. Unfortunately, the only way to get better at something is just to do it. So that's something I've really realized too. It's like, I'm not going to be great at this the 12th time I do it. But by the 100th time, I'll probably be really good. And by the 500th time, I'm going to be amazing. So... just giving yourself a reality check and working on that and like looking for, instead of just beating yourself up and telling yourself all the ways you're not good enough, actually looking for the solutions to those problems that you're bringing up to yourself. So start working on it. Then another important part of this is remembering why you loved or wanted to go toward this thing in the first place. So when we get so entrenched in the self-critical voice, The process becomes totally painful and not fun, and you can often forget why you even wanted to do the thing in the first place. So honing back into the love, being really proactive about the things you want to improve, and remembering to be encouraging of yourself as you go along is really important. And here's another really important thing. Knowing that you don't have to have it all figured out right now. There's a reason why this is called a creative journey, okay? And I think that... when that self-critical voice comes up, it's the part of us that thinks if we don't have it figured out all right now, it will never get figured out and that we will be lost and not in the place we want to be forever. But the truth is that isn't true. Unfortunately for our sweet little sensitive souls, this is all a journey and there's stumbles along the way. But as I often mention, when I talk about the art of being bad at something, you have to crawl before you walk. and walk before you run. And there's plenty of falls along the way, but we forget that when we get into our adulthood and we're so highly skilled at so many of the things we do. And so when we go to try something new or we start a new venture and we don't exactly know how to do it, we think we're failing when really this is just the natural progression of things. So that has been so helpful for me as I've been doing a lot more public speaking is just remembering like, I don't have to have it all figured out right now. I'm exactly where I need to be. and I have all the talent I need to become excellent at this, I'm just going to keep working at it until I am and deeply love and forgive myself. I mean, it shouldn't be forgiveness, but it really does feel like forgiveness to me, like deeply loving and like being like, hey, I forgive you that you're not perfect at this and that you're never going to be perfect at anything. And that's a beautiful part of being human. And yeah, just having like an unbelievable amount of self-compassion as you go along this journey. So remember, next time you start a creative venture, if you see areas for improvement and you start going into shame talk or a self-critical voice or telling yourself you suck, instead of saying that, why don't you try saying, I love what I'm doing. I see my potential and I am so excited to improve. I believe in myself. Thank you for listening to this Unleash mini episode. It was executive produced and hosted by me, Lauren LaGrasso. Music is by Liz Full. For more information about me and the show, you can follow us at Lauren LaGrasso and at Unleash Your Inner Creative on social media. If you like what you heard today, especially if you like these minisodes, leave us a rating and review to let us know you like them. And you can also share any specific thoughts you have about upcoming minisodes you'd like to hear. And if you want us to keep putting them into rotation. One more thing. If you'd like to work with me as a creative coach, go ahead and book a free discovery call. You can email me, lauren.lagrasso at gmail.com. And finally, stay tuned to your Unleashed feed because tomorrow I'm going to have a very special bonus episode for you that I know you're going to love. I love you and I believe in you. Talk with you soon.
