Lose Your Critic for Good
Preview of an inspiring new book
To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:
Executive Summary
Yesterday I Zoomed with an author whose book has got me talking to myself in the bathroom mirror.
You’re a good-looking, older guy on track to your target weight.
The Morning Journal is terrific. Congrats on figuring out the tech snarls.
And so on.
To be honest, I’ve always thought people who spoke affirmations to themselves in the mirror were just plain embarrassing.
Sue Erhart’s new book, Lose Your Critic for Good: A Step-by-Step Process for Reclaiming Your Spirit, prompted me to take another look at the man in the mirror. To look him right the eyes, in fact, while practicing out loud new ideas, intentions, and affirmations.
Set for release on January 12, Sue’s book lays out 28 days of practical exercises, like mirror affirmations, designed to set yourself free from the inner critic.
In her understanding, that critic is no more than a habit of thoughts. Its goal may be to keep you safe, but its effect is to keep you scared, small, and haunted by “shoulds.” It loves rules and either-or thinking.
Sound familiar? It did to me.
If pressed, I would probably say I doubt that my thinking is subject to meaningful change. My behavior has improved in the nearly 40 years since my last drink, that’s for sure. But my thinking? Isn’t that hard wired, a mix of genes and nurture?
Not according to Sue Erhart.
She believes you can change a thought habit just like you can acquire the habit of brushing your teeth twice a day instead of once.
You can practice new ideas—thus the part about talking to yourself in the mirror, and the other exercises.
Lose Your Critic for Good is Sue’s first book. She has been developing and sharing these ideas at her Practical Spirituality website and through a weekly email newsletter and online courses.
If that sounds like her day job, it isn’t.
She does this spiritual work in her spare time from a job heading up the legal department at a multi-billion-dollar insurance company. And she is married, the mother of teenagers. Let’s just say her ideas have been road tested.
I thoroughly enjoyed me conversation with this (almost) critic-free dynamo.
My message to the guy in the mirror:
You, too, can lose your critic.