{"id":15389,"date":"2023-04-12T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/?p=15389"},"modified":"2023-04-12T10:07:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T14:07:05","slug":"episode-60-how-to-turn-off-your-inner-critic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/episode-60-how-to-turn-off-your-inner-critic\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 60: How to Turn Off Your Inner Critic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: How to Turn Off Your Inner Critic\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/1OfQFjWB9EB7QWl9f3KKIk?si=d9de99ea640643a4&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taraschuster.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Tara Schuster<\/a> was Vice President of Talent and Development at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cc.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Comedy Central<\/a>, and much of her identity and self-esteem was founded on that Emmy and Peabody Award-winning work. But when she was laid off during the pandemic, a severe identity crisis followed. Now, Tara is the author of <em>Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies <\/em>and the forthcoming <em>Glow in the F*cking Dark<\/em>, two nonfiction powerhouses that use Tara\u2019s life story to explore universal truths about finding internal validation. She and David sit down to discuss \u201cunlearning\u201d negative behaviors rooted in childhood trauma, silencing your inner frenemy, the beauty of journaling in the morning, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How to Turn Off Your Inner Critic | Episode 60 | Keep Connected Podcast\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ef-D16A6hc4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Show Notes<\/h2>\n<p><strong>This is a special episode with bestselling author Tara Schuster. This is an individual who worked at <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cc.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Comedy Central<\/strong><\/a><strong> and has also written the books <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taraschuster.com\/glow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><em>Glow In The F*cking Dark<\/em><\/strong><\/a><strong> and <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taraschuster.com\/lillies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><em>Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies<\/em><\/strong><\/a><strong>. It is not going to be all about F words, we promise. Happy reading and learning. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taraschuster.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Tara<\/strong><\/a><strong>, welcome to the show. You are f******* awesome. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Can you say hello to me all the time? That was the nicest hello I have ever heard. You are f****** awesome. Thank you for having me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>People might be wondering, \u201cDavid never introduced, and says, \u2018F****** awesome,\u2019 to their guests. Why would he be saying that?\u201d I say that because your previous bestseller is called <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taraschuster.com\/lillies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><em>Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies<\/em><\/strong><\/a><strong> and your soon-to-be bestseller, <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taraschuster.com\/glow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><em>Glow in the F*cking Dark<\/em><\/strong><\/a><strong>, takes lots of comfort in that word. You are an amazing person. I\u2019m glad to have you. We will throw a couple of bombs around, but it will not be with this level of persistence. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Thank you for having me. I\u2019m thrilled to talk to you. When we chatted before, I told you about how I had such a good experience with Meetup doing an event around emotional health during the holidays. Your team was awesome. I was like, \u201cThis is its own Meetup. It is preparing for this event.\u201d They were thorough and kind. One woman, Janine, set me up with a whole other organization. It was cool. You have good peeps in your organization.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It is important because you can\u2019t make the shoemaker\u2019s children go barefoot. What I mean by that is Meetup is a kind organization. We focused on ending loneliness and mental health and helping introverts and people that don\u2019t have a community. We look for that in our people. When we hire people, we make sure to prioritize kindness as part of the priority. I\u2019m glad you experienced that, and hopefully, many others will. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Let\u2019s talk about your story. You have written and talked a lot about having to reparent yourself. You are F-up your childhood. Share a little context for people and help people to understand the background story for our readers. I know this is going to be the absolute first time you have ever told that. Try to doze and have the enthusiasm of a first time. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This is the first time ever, despite two books that go into this. Not to total mood shift, but I grew up in a house where things came to die, the pets and animals. It was super neglectful and psychologically abusive. I don\u2019t blame my parents for those circumstances. They were deeply traumatized people who did not have the capacity to learn how to take care of my sister and me. What I learned from that experience was the only way I was going to get attention from adults was to hustle for my worth, get good grades, get into an Ivy League college, and get the best job. Isn\u2019t this job fancy? I ended up at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cc.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Comedy Central<\/a>, where I was an executive in charge of shows like Key and Peele, working with David Spade and all these fancy people.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You get to tell lots of people at cocktail parties, \u201cI work for Comedy Central. I work for fancy people. I must be happy and emotionally healthy.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m like, \u201cI\u2019m in Hollywood. This is glamorous and fancy.\u201d I only realized everyone in my past knew that there was neglect going on. I felt good being able to say, \u201cI\u2019m the Vice President of Talent Development at Comedy Central. I made it. I\u2019m not a weirdo. Aren\u2019t you jealous?\u201d My whole identity was tied up in that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How much did you hide or neglect, and people didn\u2019t know and would have been surprised, versus they looked at me like, \u201cPoor Tara?\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No, none of that. It was completely hidden. What I know is you can\u2019t completely hide that. It is weird when you are not inviting anybody to your house and don\u2019t want them to meet your parents, where you are evading the truth constantly. I didn\u2019t talk about any of this until <em>Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies<\/em> came out. A lot of my friends were like, \u201cThat makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_15409\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15409\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Buy-Yourself-cking-Lilies-Rituals\/dp\/0525509887\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-15409\" src=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Graphics-Caption-1-KCM-60-Tara-Schuster-210x315.jpg\" alt=\"KCM 60 | Inner Critic\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Graphics-Caption-1-KCM-60-Tara-Schuster-210x315.jpg 210w, https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Graphics-Caption-1-KCM-60-Tara-Schuster-420x630.jpg 420w, https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Graphics-Caption-1-KCM-60-Tara-Schuster.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15409\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies: And Other Rituals to Fix Your Life, from Someone Who&#8217;s Been There<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I was ashamed. I was using this high status, \u201cI have a great job,\u201d as my external validation. That is all I had. I might have kept going that way, looking good on the outside, being good at work but bad at life, except I was a mess. I was severely anxious and depressed. I don\u2019t talk about it in the first book, but now I\u2019m willing to. I was flirting with suicidal ideation constantly. It was inside of me. It was like sandpaper on the soul. It was rough and wrong. I felt 10 out of 10 anxious and I had a disc track playing in my head. All I could hear was, \u201cYou are a failure. You are never going to succeed. You are not lovable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>All that, Tara, would have surprised the people around you, or at this point, you were not as good at hiding it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I am the master of hiding my emotions. Nobody knew what was going on at all. I would show up to work as the straight-A, good daughter of the office, and loyal. I\u2019m like, \u201cLook at all these things I did. Isn\u2019t this great?\u201d I\u2019m going to get extra credit by going to this leadership conference that nobody asked me to. It is over the top. It might have kept going that way. Had I not, on my 25th birthday, drunk out my therapist and threatened to hurt myself.<\/p>\n<p>It is a particular shame when you wake up and realize that is what happened because I listened back to her voicemails. That is how I even knew. I looked at my phone and I was like, \u201cWhy is my doctor calling me? It is weird. What\u2019s up, doc?\u201d It is Saturday night. In her messages, she was getting increasingly worried about finding me, getting me to go to a hospital, and getting me to be with someone. It wasn\u2019t until I heard the worry in her voice that I started worrying about myself. I thought, \u201cIf I don\u2019t do something to save my life, there is not going to be much more of a life left for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That morning, I was hungover. In my Forever 21 sequin number, I got serious. I said to myself, \u201cI didn\u2019t have parents. I don\u2019t have anyone to nurture me, wise mentors, or a support system. I got to figure this out now.\u201d It was with urgency. I decided, \u201cI got to reparent myself.\u201d That wasn\u2019t a term when I started this project. I knew I needed to go back and unlearn so much. I had to unlearn a bunch. I knew that I had to learn a lot.<\/p>\n<p>I started a Google Doc because I was such a worker bee. We do everything with a Google Doc, even mental health. I wrote all the questions I had, \u201cWhat are values? What are principles? What are vegetables? What are they? Which ones should I be eating?\u201d I still have that question. I feel like Instagram is always telling me. It is one thing. We should understand this better at this point in civilization. I did this for five years. In the end, I had a 600-page Google Doc and felt like a completely different person. I read a memoir as self-help. I sought out adults to teach me, people I respected and admired. It was a constant battle.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Your journey, as you describe it here, is incredibly self-initiated. Did you go to a facility, a hospital, or seek any more formal process for therapy aside from the therapist you are going to, or you chose your own adventure to a large extent in your way?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This is a mystery about me. I\u2019m what the writer Gretchen Rubin would describe as an upholder, which means I\u2019m always hustling for external validation, but I\u2019m the one doing it. I don\u2019t need encouragement.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It is very initiative-taking.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That is a gift my parents gave me. I\u2019m sure that is part of their personality.<\/p>\n<p><strong>That is what they had to do to survive to some extent. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My little survivor voice is if I didn\u2019t do everything I did to get out of that house and get myself tools for mental health, I wouldn\u2019t be here now. It was all self-led. I found incredible mentors in the books of Nora Ephron and Steve Martin. I soaked up everything. At the end of five years, I felt stable for the first time, which emotional stability seemed impossible. Some days, I\u2019m not worried and spiraling. That was a huge momentous achievement. That is when I realize, \u201cI have a whole guidebook. I have 600 pages of this journey. I wonder if this would be helpful for anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I would have a book like this when I was going through it. <em>Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies<\/em> is an offering of, \u201cYou don\u2019t need to have had as neglect full a childhood as I had.\u201d We all have holes. Even the best of parents who nurtured this s*** out of you can\u2019t do everything. They are humans. This book is for anybody who is looking to fill in some holes and learn how to self-nurture. That is what <em>Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies<\/em> is all about. That is the briefest version of how I can talk about my backstory.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Every childhood experience has its holes. Even the best parents cannot do everything because they are only human.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Do you have a relationship with either of your parents now? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Yes. I have an extremely close relationship with my dad now. I had this Comedy Central job and that was my status. I got laid off at the beginning of the pandemic. With it, I had a complete identity crisis. People introduced me as Tara Schuster, Comedy Central. It was my married last name. That is who I was. When I lost that job and identity, all of my worst traumas, which I had suppressed, came bubbling to the surface because no one else was defining me. I didn\u2019t have a schedule to be on and these things wanted to be dealt with.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You define yourself by external versus internal. That is the problem with losing the external. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I wondered, \u201cDo we have an essential self? Is there something more?\u201d I had realized much of my life had been a reaction to trauma, not a proactive decision about who I am. One of the things I did was I stopped talking to my dad. I hadn\u2019t talked to my mom for several years. I don\u2019t have any relationship with my mom. I realized I love my dad. I need space. If I\u2019m going to heal these darkest wounds, I cannot have him on my mind. I had taken care of his emotions for so long. I can\u2019t do this.<\/p>\n<p>I stopped talking to him. He got COVID. I found this out from my sister. I thought, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter. I\u2019m going to help him.\u201d When I went to help him, I found out the craziest thing of all, which was he had gone to therapy every week of those few years to answer the question, \u201cWhy is my daughter not speaking to me?\u201d I\u2019m not exaggerating at all. He is 180% different. He thanked me if I helped him through COVID.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How old was your dad at that time? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>He was 78.<\/p>\n<p><strong>That is a message that I want our readers to read, which is people oftentimes think of therapy for teenagers. They were like, \u201cI\u2019m figuring out life. I don\u2019t know what to do.\u201d To have that transformation at 78 years old and be 180 degrees different person in the ways that you want to be different, I find that incredibly motivating as someone who is a middle-aged person, but I\u2019m not quite 78 myself. It is important for people to realize that.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The reason I tell that story is I don\u2019t want that story interpreted as if you set a boundary, someone will change. That is rarely the case. Boundary setting is important. The point of even sharing a detail like that is that we all have more agency than we think. There isn\u2019t a moment when it is too late. If you were to talk to my dad now, he would say that it was painful for him, and he is glad that I stopped talking to him because, as I write about in this book, he feels like a human for the first time. He feels like he is going to get to live a life. There is a sorrow to me of like, \u201cI have a dad for the first time. Why couldn\u2019t it have been like this much sooner?\u201d It takes time it takes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For a lot of people, it never happens. However many years he has left is a gift. It will be a gift to you too. You talk regularly now. You talk about your books and the past. He must be beyond proud of you. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>He is very proud. People get afraid of honesty. If we talk about this, it is going to be worse. I don\u2019t want to talk about this. What I learned through this whole journey is it was the secrecy that was rotting everything. Once I had the books, my dad, on paper, could validate. He was like, \u201cEverything in here happened. I\u2019m sorry.\u201d It forced him to look at the situation more objectively. From my eyes, how that would\u2019ve felt. If anything, our relationship is millions of times better than it ever was. I would write the books all over again simply to be closer to my dad.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You wrote your next book, <em>Glow in the F*cking Dark<\/em>. There is a f*cking series going on here.<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_15406\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15406\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/en\/book\/show\/61685973\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-15406\" src=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Graphics-Caption-2-KCM-60-Tara-Schuster-210x315.jpg\" alt=\"KCM 60 | Inner Critic\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Graphics-Caption-2-KCM-60-Tara-Schuster-210x315.jpg 210w, https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Graphics-Caption-2-KCM-60-Tara-Schuster-420x630.jpg 420w, https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Graphics-Caption-2-KCM-60-Tara-Schuster.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15406\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Glow in the F*cking Dark<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>When I lost the job, I did not take a moment to reflect. I didn\u2019t say, \u201cI\u2019m well-resourced. I can take two seconds and think about this.\u201d I thought, \u201cI need meaning now. I need to be busy now.\u201d How I dealt with everything was hustle, produce, and make.<\/p>\n<p><strong>As long as you don\u2019t have to think, it is always easier. If you are doing lots of stuff, you don\u2019t have to think. That works. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That job had been full-time, 24-hour. I\u2019m passionate about this job. I needed something to replace it. It was 2020. I googled, \u201cHow can I help in the 2020 election?\u201d I was like, \u201cThis is a big deal. This is what I will do.\u201d The first search result was, \u201cYou can help register voters in Arizona.\u201d I grabbed my Vitamix and a bag full of books that I would never read. I hopped in my Prius of Doom, and I moved to Arizona.<\/p>\n<p>En route, somewhere in the Mojave Desert between Los Angeles and Flagstaff, I had a full-body dissociative episode. If you haven\u2019t had one, it\u2019s your mind is trying to shut down any traumatic memories and anything you don\u2019t want to think about. It represses, but it makes your body feel like it is not present. You don\u2019t feel present.<\/p>\n<p>I could see my hands on the steering wheel and my shoddy self-done manicure, but it was like they were floating and they weren\u2019t mine. I felt full-body sick. All of my insights could come up. I also felt out of control. I was going 95 and having trouble thinking how to stop. If you know me, I\u2019m not a good enough driver to be going 95 anywhere, much less in the middle of the desert having this episode. For the first time in my life, I realized, \u201cI have to pull over. I cannot keep hustling and overwhelming my way through life. This doesn\u2019t work. It feels awful. Now I\u2019m endangering my own life.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If you keep on hustling and overwhelming your way through life, you are only endangering yourself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Pulling over wasn\u2019t physically pulling over it. It is metaphorically pulling over.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is like my soul got to rest. I could not keep doing this. I pulled over. It was nighttime. In the Arizona desert, it looked like I was surrounded by a starfield. I was like glowing stars everywhere. Maybe that is because, in LA, we have so much pollution that you are like, \u201cThat is a star.\u201d Someone was like, \u201cNo, it is a satellite. There are no stars.\u201d I was standing there looking at these, and I wondered, \u201cIt is dark out here.\u201d In 2020, it was such a dark world at this moment. I got no control over that. Is there a place within me that can glow as these stars do?<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is interesting is that stars glow due to stress and pressure. Stress and pressure are good for creating glowing. It is similar to us humans. I listened to something on a podcast. They talked about the importance of having small negatives, pressures, and stress to avoid big negatives, pressures, and stress. Pressure and stress are positive things because it moves you in the right direction as long as it is something that you can handle. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is unavoidable. Good or bad, you are going to be stressed and pressured. It is going to happen over and over again. You have no control. The only question here is, how do you find internal safety? How do you stop being moved by the wind every time there is a gust? That is all we have control over.<\/p>\n<p><strong>One of the things that I read about that you write and read about, which I thought was well said, is about silencing your inner front me and shielding yourself from self-criticism and the importance of it. It is important. I want to pull it out. Can you talk a little bit more about that because everyone suffers from this to varying degrees? Help us understand it a little more. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I was addicted to self-criticism. All I could hear was this running disc track which was grinding me down because it is hard to dream, live or be happy if you are that negative about yourself. I knew that was happening. One of the first tools I was ever introduced to is journaling as a way to even see what was going on in my interior. I\u2019m sorry to say this, but I have been journaling for more than a decade now, and it works more than anything.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why are you sorry to say this?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is because it is annoying. Who wants to journal? It is terrible.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Do you handwrite your journaling? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Is it a different experience because I know you talk about journaling a lot, to write by hand versus to type? I was talking to a family member of mine. I said to her, \u201cIt is important to journal.\u201d She was like, \u201cI have never written anything in my life. I would type.\u201d What is the advice here? Is typing okay or not? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Anything that gets you to journal is great. There is an added benefit to writing because your mind and body have to unite to do something physical. One of the most beautiful things about journaling is you get out of your mind and onto the page. How I do it is I word vomit three pages every morning, which is taken from Julia Cameron\u2019s fabulous book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theartistswaybook.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>The Artist\u2019s Way<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>It is without stopping and thinking. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You are not even writing. It\u2019s more like you are venting. You are not reporting on what happened yesterday. You are asking yourself, \u201cHow do I feel?\u201d It is something most of us do not take any time to think about nor know any of the vocabulary for. I was journaling all the time. I saw how little I thought of myself and how doomed I felt. That was mind-blowing to see that. What was great was, on the page, you can deal with those things.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_15407\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15407\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-15407 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Graphics-Caption-3-KCM-60-Tara-Schuster.jpg\" alt=\"KCM 60 | Inner Critic\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Graphics-Caption-3-KCM-60-Tara-Schuster.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Graphics-Caption-3-KCM-60-Tara-Schuster-473x315.jpg 473w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15407\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Inner Critic: Journaling is more venting than writing. You\u2019re not reporting what happened yesterday but asking yourself what you feel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I realized I have this voice within me. It is not quite my own voice. It is my friend and me within. It is somebody I have known forever, like an old camp friend, who I wouldn\u2019t be friends with now. If we met, I would not want to hang out with them. We got history. I keep my friend of me within around. I needed to figure out how to let her be quiet a little bit more of the time.<\/p>\n<p>What I did was I would write down everything she was saying about me. \u201cHear all the fiction,\u201d she is saying about me. I would put a column down on a piece of paper. On the other side, I would write the facts, what else is true? Is it true that I\u2019m going to be unloved, never find romantic love, and never have a partner, or is it true that I have so much love in my life? I have succeeded at everything I have ever tried once I put some effort into it. Why would this be any different? If I keep holding this attitude, aren\u2019t I going to make things much worse? You are able to parse things out. Sometimes I would write a letter to my friend of me within, refuting all the charges and defending myself.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You would acknowledge the criticism first. It is not disregarding. It is acknowledging it, and not just acknowledging verbally but documenting it and finding ways to combat that criticism. Some of it would say, \u201cThat is true.\u201d Some of it would say, \u201cIt is not true.\u201d That was a way to understand which things to truly be self-critical about and which things, hopefully, in the majority of things, not to necessarily be and not to be as obsessed with.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of the things you said at first is paramount, which is don\u2019t dismiss these things. We often think, \u201cI know intellectually that is not a real thing. I\u2019m not going to deal with it.\u201d The problem is we are not dealing with it. We are pushing it to the side. Whatever that little voice is, it wants to be heard. If you dismiss it, it is going to keep coming back tenfold because it wants you to hear something. I would take it a step further and say, \u201cI realize you can\u2019t reject your way to self-acceptance. You have to love those parts of yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>You change a lot of things. You could harness it in the right way, but you can\u2019t change who you are internally. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What I realized is those voices now work with me, not against me. It is unbelievably different for me how I walk around the world. I largely don\u2019t criticize myself. I largely say, \u201cI notice that. How interesting. Let me work with that feeling.\u201d Through all these practices that I describe in my second book, like meditation, which I try to explain in a less annoying way than most people talk about meditation, journaling, or any of the practices, they give you more space within you. They are things that help you manage your emotions. You are less easily overwhelmed. It is not that I don\u2019t get anxious anymore. I do. It is not the only thing. It doesn\u2019t like to hook in and overwhelm.<\/p>\n<p><strong>When you do, you have a number of different actions that you can take. I was talking to a friend who gets anxious. What she does is she experiences all five of the senses and takes a pause. It grounds her. Everyone experiences some level of anxiety. It is a question of how you handle that anxiety when you are getting it. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>You talked a little bit about meditation and journaling. One of the things you write quite a bit about is the morning time and once practice in the morning. I\u2019m a big morning person. Not everyone is as lucky as me to love the morning. Part of it is that I want to get as many things as I can that are important to be done during the day. I know that if I get them done in the morning, I don\u2019t have to worry about and think about whether I\u2019m going to be able to get them done in the evening and have that stress. Talk a little bit about your mornings. What do they look like? What do you want them to look like? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I have another apology. I\u2019m sorry that it works to be a morning person. No one is more sorry than I am. I hated the mornings. I\u2019m going to comedy shows for my job. I\u2019m not getting home until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Comedy writers were not known to wake up at 5:00 AM and go to sleep by 10:00.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I realized, \u201cI have priorities that have nothing to do with my job or who I am externally. If I don\u2019t do them in the morning, they are not going to get done because the world takes its toll. The world demands things of you, your partner, your kids, and your boss.\u201d For me, what my mornings look like is I wake up at 6:30 every morning. The first thing I do is meditate for 20 to 30 minutes. A good way to begin is to be grounded and chill for a minute or at least alone, but conscious for one minute. Let\u2019s do that. I journal for about an hour. It is 20 minutes of journaling and 40 minutes of writing. Twenty minutes would be great. It is word vomiting and then I exercise.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You haven\u2019t eaten anything yet, no coffee.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m on an intermittent fasting schedule. I would have coffee if I were to even get more granular. I get out of bed, put the blinds down, and brush my teeth. It is a whole order. One thing follows the next.<\/p>\n<p><strong>People say to me, \u201cMy mornings are like groundhog day.\u201d If you looked at my morning, especially in the last several years since COVID started, where it got consistent, it was like, go downstairs, make my athletic greens, drink my athletic greens, and empty the dishwasher. It is one after another. It is consistent. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My schedule is boring, which means I can be creative and risky in other parts of my life because I feel secure and grounded in those things. Creatively, I\u2019m not scared anymore.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I love that for people whose every day they wake up and think, \u201cWhat am I going to do now? That is scary.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is soothing to have a ritual like that. The other big thing is I don\u2019t look at my phone for the first hour that I\u2019m conscious. It is a game changer. Until you start doing it, you are like, \u201cMy life is immeasurably better because I didn\u2019t get sucked down on Instagram or doom spiral. I wasn\u2019t looking at a screen. First thing I was with me. If you wanted to jumpstart your whole self-care routine, you would sleep with the phone, not in your room. You would not look at it for the first hour you are awake. It is horrible and terrible part.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My wife does not let us have our phones in our room and guest room. We keep it outside. It is a little more difficult because I like to look at my little morning newsletters while I have my breakfast, but I\u2019m going to see if it is possible. I love that morning ritual. That is amazing. Many people can learn from it. They don\u2019t need to copy what you do. They need to figure out what the right thing is for them, and they can be inspired by some of the things that you do. Having a ritual is helpful. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>I have many questions. I saw that you know Glennon and you have done some things with her together. Everyone talks about bearing it all. You were someone who didn\u2019t share nearly anything about yourself. There are many people who are reading who also are in a similar place. Bren\u00e9 Brown shares it all. They also hadn\u2019t shared much at various times in their life. How hard was it for you in the beginning? Is it harder than you thought it would be or easier than you thought it would be? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t hard at all. It shocked me. I often wonder what is wrong with me. People would ask me this question, \u201cHow hard is it? You are vulnerable on the page. You are telling everybody everything.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cThis wasn\u2019t normal. I should be scared. What?\u201d What freaked me out was I didn\u2019t even realize to be scared about it. It felt natural. What I would say is something I learned from Glennon Doyle, which is, \u201cThe stories that we are telling are not that personal.\u201d I only will write a story if it feels like there is a universal truth. I\u2019m using my details. You can see it through my eyes and maybe it resonates, but there are things that everybody can relate to. They feel different when I write them. If it is too personal and about me and it is not healed, I can tell. It is a weird, different vibration to the writing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It is not something people can gain and learn from. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I only write something if I\u2019m interested in it and it would be helpful to other people. Those are the two questions I always ask. If it is something else like I\u2019m ranting, venting, or I\u2019m like, \u201cThis happened, and I need to figure it out on paper,\u201d that is not something I would include in a book.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It is healthy still to do. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There is a difference between my own journal and writing. One is deeply personal. The other is I\u2019m using personal stories to tell a universal truth.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I have to ask it because I\u2019m wondering, based on the way that you were parented and your unparenting experiences, do you want to have kids? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I am ambivalent about if I want to have kids or not. I write in <em>Glow<\/em> about my own. I didn\u2019t know what I wanted. I was 35. A lot of 35-year-old women around me are like, \u201cYou should freeze your eggs. Give yourself more options.\u201d I was completely ambivalent. I\u2019m like, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d Enough people said it that I thought, \u201cFor the future me who has a better understanding of all of this and who is more healed, she might want more options. Since I don\u2019t know, let me do this.\u201d I had an expiring insurance benefit and I love a deal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It is expensive.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I knew I was going to get a steep discount. I cannot resist.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Some people like to go discount shopping and you like to go to discount healthcare.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I did freeze my eggs and go through. It was a terrible process that I want to tell people about, and I do it in the book because I don\u2019t know if I want to have kids. I have no clue.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You are a different person in your mid-late 30s than you were in your early 20s and you were in your early teens. You could be a different person in your early to mid-40s than you are now. Creating that option for yourself is prudent. It is good that you got the discount. It is a potentially great name to name your kid if it happens. Rapid-fire questions and rapid-fire answers. Are you ready? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I think so. Let\u2019s try.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The first time you saw yourself as a leader. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At Comedy Central, when I started having meetings that people would come up to me and say, \u201cThat wasn\u2019t miserable. Thanks for calling me out. Thanks for the praise.\u201d I was like, \u201cI\u2019m changing our culture a little at this office.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>If you could access a time machine and go anywhere in the world at any time, where and when are you going? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I would go to New York in the Upper West Side in the 1990s to meet Nora Ephron and have coffee, rugelach, or something like that with her. She is my favorite author, director, and icon. There is a picture of her above my computer, staring at me at all times. I would like to meet her to hear her talk. I don\u2019t even know that I have questions. I want to hear her opinion on everything.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chocolate or strawberry rugelach?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Chocolate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>No cinnamon or strawberry food. Our readers are like, \u201cWhat is rugelach?\u201d Look it up. You could Google it if you are outside the US. Name one thing on your bucket list. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I want to go to Patagonia. I have been to Buenos Aires. It took a long solo vacation there, but I wasn\u2019t brave enough to go to Patagonia, and now I\u2019m like, \u201cI got to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Do you want to see the penguins? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I want to see everything.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It is supposed to be incredibly beautiful. I have not been myself, but one day we will go together. Last questions. You have done many things. You are not even halfway done. Your third is done with your life. What do you most want to be remembered by? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I want to be remembered that people felt like they were seen, they felt special when I talked to them, and that I was present with people. That is what I want to be remembered for.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I felt that you were present in the conversation. Thank you for taking the time to be on the show. I feel connected to you. Hopefully, many of our readers feel the same. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Thank you for having me. This was fabulous.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thanks for tuning in with Tara Schuster as our guest. What an exceptional individual. Some takeaways. The power of the morning ritual, whether it is meditation, exercise, and yoga. Not listening and interacting with social media is powerful. Her identification is not as her job or externalities but with an understanding of who she truly is and the importance of internal safety versus self-criticism. If you enjoy this episode, subscribe, leave a review, and let\u2019s keep connected because life is better together. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Important Links<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cc.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Comedy Central<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taraschuster.com\/glow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Glow In The F*cking Dark<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taraschuster.com\/lillies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theartistswaybook.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>The Artist\u2019s Way<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<div style=\"height:180px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-excerpt\"><p>An author and Comedy Central veteran discusses finding internal validation and stopping negative self-talk on the Keep Connected podcast. <\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":15423,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Episode 60: How to Turn Off Your Inner Critic<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Tara Schuster discusses the greater power to unlock by turning off your inner critic, unlearning negative behaviors, and setting a meditative morning routine.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/blog\/episode-60-how-to-turn-off-your-inner-critic\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" 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