Those Witheringly Cruel Voices in Your Head: How to Silence Them for Good
You're doing just fine. But here's the catch: The critics in your head won't let you believe it. Martha Beck can help you replace those bitter pills once and for all with your own personal pep squad.
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How to Appoint the Right Everybody Committee
1. Figure out which members of your current committee are working against you.
Refer to that list you made above—the negative judgments that haunt you—and write the names of people who've expressed those judgments:
Now write the names of anyone who'd judge you harshly if they knew your darkest secret or your heart's desires or what you look like naked. Do not list groups, only individuals. Dealing with actual data, instead of your generalizations, is the key to making this work.
These people no longer get seats on your Everybody Committee. Mentally hand them their pink slips and explain that you're heading in another direction. Then keep following these instructions, or the nasties won't leave.
2. Choose one "compassionate other" to chair your new committee.
You may already have someone on your Everybody Committee who loves you absolutely unconditionally. If so, that person may remain as chair of your new committee. If you don't know any unconditionally accepting people, you must find one. This person doesn't actually have to be alive. Or even human. If you're stumped, consider these candidates: anyone who treated you with respect and kindness when you were little (a teacher, your nana, Kermit the Frog); any author, blogger, or performer whose work makes you feel understood and encouraged; any nonhuman mammal that loves you (in a pinch, a highly affectionate bird will do); your higher power. But I'm not talking about a crazy-ass God who loves to hand out one-way tickets to hell. I'm talking about a loving presence that wants nothing but your happiness. If your higher power means anything else to you, replace it with a golden retriever.
3. Use "snowball sampling" to round out your committee.
Snowball sampling is what social scientists use to obtain the opposite of a random sample—that is, a group of people who are linked in certain specified ways.
Imagine your new committee chair as a snowball you've packed with your own mittened hands. Now use the snowball to "pick up" additional like-minded souls by mentally rolling it through the people who are near it. Seek out any cousins who loved Nana as much as you did. Chat online with your favorite blogger's fans. Google other parrot owners. Check out congregations that share your spiritual beliefs. Even if it takes a while to connect with these folks, here's the awesome thing: You need only three or four people to create a new Everybody Committee, to convince your irrational, emotional brain that these people represent the whole world.
That is, if you follow the last step.
4. Connect with your new committee members every day for 90 days.
Obviously, I stole this idea from AA. Newly recovering alcoholics are encouraged to attend 90 meetings in 90 days, because this helps remake their social network, changing boozy or abusive Everybodies into people committed to sobriety. It works, people, so take the challenge. Every day for 90 days, spend at least an hour reading, watching, Facebooking, or physically interacting with your new loving, accepting, encouraging Everybody Committee. It'll feel odd at first, but I guarantee it'll grow on you.
Keep the Snowball Rolling
I began my current Everybody Committee with a possibly fictional Chinese philosopher who died 2,500 years ago. For months my committee was composed of dead writers I knew only on paper. But I hung out with them by reading their work every day—I still do—and the more I aligned with their enlightened perspective, the more I found myself connecting to people who are similar to them. That first tiny, deceased committee has snowballed into a passel of beloved friends.
This is what I want you to experience, too. I want you to oust your internal critics, the ones who say you're not good enough, who think you're on the wrong track. I want you to be supervised, all day every day, by people who forgive your errors and believe in your destiny. I hope you try this method of achieving that. And if you think that makes me a bit smarmy or completely insane, go right ahead. That's really none of my business.
Martha Beck's latest book is Finding Your Way in a Wild New World.(Free Press).
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