Plausible deniability.

I saw this last week on illdoctrine.com and I am still watching it. A comical and spot on assessment of that punk ass little hater that lives and serves to upend any forward progress we try to make in this life. I've written about gremlins and such in the past and as much as I know there's been a lot said about it, I still find myself waking up every morning and trying to sneak out of my bedroom past that hater before he grabs me, tackles me and tells me exactly how he intends for me to spend the next 12-16 hours.

In an earlier post, J challenged listeners to reflect on the strategies they use to keep that little hater at bay, and while it is days late and dollars short (see? see how he works to discredit my attempts?) I'm gonna share what has worked in the past for me if to achieve nothing else but the reminder to self that this is no new battle I'm facing.

1. Create a clarity sheet and keep it somewhere readily accessible.
On a day when you're very clear, very confident and moving fluidly without any negative thoughts, create a clarity sheet that lists all the things you know to be true about you and the evidence that supports it. Almost like a personal resume, collect the 5 most memorable quotes the really significant people in your life have offered you about who you are. List the times you produced something that surprised and excited people around you. By the time you get to the bottom of that list, you should be reminded that your achievements and ability are not flukes, but the truest representation of what you are capable of when you do not get in your own way.

2. Listen to your body and then move it.
Anxiety is fear. Fear is (as that old therapy adage goes) False Evidence Appearing Real. Many people acknowledge that they feel fear either in their stomach or chest initially, before it starts directly affecting the brain's ability to process and function normally. I use the physical response as a cue that my hater has entered the building, and my brain will now serve up all sorts of "evidence" to support why what I want to achieve, do, be or accomplish is highly improbable. I have a choice: fester, or dodge the bullet. Choose wisely. Get up and air box the shit out of it (the hater, not your head). Try not to do this in front of a studio audience, though.

3. Exercise plausible deniability.
Don't laugh. It can work. Don't own the monster's antics as your own. Allow yourself to view it as a separate entity. One that can act up all it wants but is not at all associated to what you have the capacity to do and be when you are at your best. So when the hater starts throwing up all sorts of failures, missed cues, mistakes or anything else used to keep you relegated to a position of submission, you sidestep them and refer to your clarity sheet. Be your best. The rest is a ghost story.

4. Do things that you do well to stop the negative charge.
My little hater is especially skilled at reinforcing beliefs I might have nursed since childhood. One of the quickest ways to shut it down, is to do things that I know I can do well, almost effortlessly. It spurs momentum to actually engage in the stuff that doesn't always come to readily to me. It stops the negative charge in its tracks because now I'm actively creating positive proof instead of finding ways to nurse the negative charge.

I'll use pottery as an example.

When I walk into the studio and I'm in a tussle with my little hater, I am anxious and tense and fearful before I pick up my bag of clay. If I sit at my wheel at that point, I've created a very negative outcome for myself before I slap that ball of clay on center. I've already established there is no way I'm going to pull this off. Any mistakes I make at this point will feed that negative belief. I've done this a million times but I tell myself today that none of that matters because somehow all goodness has magically disappeared.

At that point, I step away from wheel. I go over to my shelf, and practice the first step. For me, that means reviewing all of the works I've created thus far. I think about the sales I've had. I think about the positive responses I've received from buyers, friends and family. I look at the pieces that have surprised and amused even me. I remind myself that I created them. That was no fluke, because it happened more than once. That is who I am.

Then, I go for a quick walk. Or, I weld some clay (if you've ever done this, you know how much labor that can actually be). I do something that will make me break a sweat and reverse the immobilization I'm experiencing. I move, so that at the very least, that hater is going to actually have to do some work to keep me oppressed.

Then I come back to that illshapen, distorted lump of whatever sitting at the center of my wheel and I exercise plausible deniability. I laugh and inform everyone that I didn't do that. That's not representative of who I am and what I can do. That was the work of someone who does not subscribe to the pattern of successes I've established for myself. I acknowledge that work as the work of something that exists merely to keep me from my own highest good. I scrape it off the wheel, mash it back up into a ball, put it back in the bag and wait for the other RPM, the true RPM to go back in and work according to a "true history."

Finally, I pick up a work already in progress and I do some carving. Carving, etching, whatever...comes naturally to me. There is no thought, no planning, I just let me hands doodle as if I'm chatting on the telephone or passing the time. I put energy into making something that's already good, better. And once I've done that, I can resume my work on the wheel because that other person has left the building and I've returned.

At least...that's the way it usually works. But we won't go there, right?