Stick, Don’t Spin: Get Your Inner Critic Out of The Driver’s Seat

Have you ever put time and effort into deciding the best path forward, setting your priorities, and deciding to move, only to find yourself derailed shortly after?

Stick, Don’t Spin! You can have anything you want… the problem comes when you don’t want any one thing long enough achieve it or you aren’t satisfied with your choice.

How can you stop spinning and — let’s be honest here — indulging your inner critic; instead practice alignment? How can you stay in this gentle-yet-powerful practice without becoming a “type-A” stereotype?

It’s easy! Here are the three steps to a Successful Stick:

1. The Mindset Shift:

Your Self, capital S — or Spirit — is always broadcasting a strong steady signal. You always have access to your own perfectly aligned lighthouse, leading you in to the next safe harbor. Each of you reading this has experienced searching for a path forward and finding it, asking for a bit of clarity and receiving it, taking time to tune in and feeling settled. That’s your stick.

So what happens? Yep, the Spin!

Most of us get sidetracked pretty quickly. We get triggered by what other people think, by how we’d have to change to keep getting what we really want, by outdated fears from the past and patterns we haven’t healed. There’s a part of this that is a natural part of being human, but the problem is we get pulled in. We get attached, and we identify with whatever is happening in the moment.

It’s like a bunch of driftwood tossing in the waves of a rising tide: If you stay focused on the rising tide (your “stick”), you’ll notice that everything in the water is being lifted up. If you get focused on one piece of floatsam or another, you’ll feel like this is one chaotic ride, and you’ll lose all sense of direction.

Here’s the secret: when you pursue mastery of a single goal, it’s like that rising body of water — everything on the water also rises. Even better, it’s like the pieces you need to be successful are the floating bits — they rise with you — and the pieces you no longer need are the sinking bits — they naturally fall away. With your focus on the rising water rather than the churning bits, you’ll feel calmer, more empowered, and more focused. You will be able to apply the focused intention that creates the manifest results you want.

Focusing on the one BIG thing you want automatically up-levels all the little things. Focusing on all the little things gets you spinning.

2. Witness, Don’t Indulge

Your emotions, witnessed, are an infallible source of information, a fascinating froth of air that shows you the shape of the waves underneath.

Witnessed, they help you navigate.

Indulged, they can quickly suck you under. It’s the difference between noticing you’re triggered, angry, tired, or frustrated… and slipping, usually unnoticed, into the story about the emotion.

You slip right past the always-changing emotion and right into a fairly static, well-worn, critical loop. You know the one — if you’re a woman it probably is full of nice messages about how you’re not good enough, you could be thin/healthy/happy/loved if only… and since you know that, why aren’t you doing it, and when are you going to get your act together…

A Byron Katie quip comes to mind here: “There is no anxiety without believing a thought that isn’t true for you.”

Your inner critic has a place, but it’s not in charge! It’s job is to repeat old beliefs so you can see them and choose to move on. Let yourself float back up and stay above the churn.

Don’t let your inner critic take over the helm.
I like to think of mine as a Court Jester, a Wit —
serving a purpose but never telling the truth!

3. Keep Going — Also Called Faith

Persistence beats talent every time. This is simply because persistence indicates “stick.” Talent alone is no protection from spin. I am talking practice here, as in what it takes to master anything. It takes practice. It takes a level of focus. It takes not giving up the first, fifth, or hundredth time the thought crosses your mind.

The truth here, is you are always practicing — it’s just that most people practice spin! It doesn’t really take any more effort to practice “stick” — to practice gentle, forgiving, consistent return to your guiding light, your one big want.

It just works better.