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Lesson Info

Answer Your Ugly Voice Back

We're just gonna dive in right now. Talking back, we spent the whole morning thing. That ugly voice inner critic that tells us things sometimes their lives, sometimes they're not lies. I'm interrupting myself for one second because I did promise my producer I would address the oxford comma. I apologize for bringing up the oxford comma. It is like the rowing, like a stink bomb into a room filled with people that you love and then running out laughing. We could talk more about the oxford common anytime you like online. I do not judge people who feel differently about the oxford comma I thought I do, and I hope that you will hold withhold judgment against me as well, and we could talk about another time. So the oxford comma gold bookmark that for another time now we're going to think back again to the ugly voice. The next page exercise eight in your workbook is similar to the page that you wrote in earlier today, where you wrote in the speech bubbles what you're ugly voice says to you. No...

w, I want you to think about all the things that you have been thinking about and that we have been talking about collectively over the course of the day, about what is true? What is not true? What do you choose to believe? What do you choose to say to yourself? What do you choose to reject? Perhaps you hadn't been thinking about what you might reject and what you might it hadn't occurred to you that perhaps the ugly voice is not always telling you the truth and that you get to decide what to believe and what not to believe. Right now, we're going to just talk back to it, those little monsters, or like the ugly voice that was saying things to you. But on this page of blank speech bubbles, instead of saying what it is saying to you, I want you to say something to it. Maybe you need to give it the hug that you feel it needs from the story that you told about your ugly creature, and when you develop some sympathy toward it, maybe you need to tell him f off and step back. Maybe you need to tell it some variety of things and address particular things that it says individually right back to it right back to it. If you need more space, flip the page over. If you want to do it in a journal, do it in a journal, but talk back to it, think about man, if I ever had a chance to sit down with my ugly voice here's what I'd say and then realize that you could do that any time you want because it's inside your own mind if you want to flip back teo the page where you wrote down what the ugly boy says earlier, if you want to go like point for point, you could do that to speak back to it attention to what? What are you trying to achieve two in speaking back to it it may be different for different people if you want to achieve what you want to gain how do you want the voice to behave once you've spoken back to it his choice language if you feel like it but we can't say that out loud, right? If we share trace language re allowed to say that I don't know on the internet let's talk about it. Okay, what do you mean by choice language? I mean, like, you know, foul language leaps. Okay, no believing words for when we have discussion, you could write it down want definitely definitely write it down. Okay, so funny because I thought when you said that I thought you meant use choice language like looking shoes tell me a little bit about this life, like it was like and I heard you and I was like what do we get to decide what like what's too offensive to say that would be amazing if we collectively decide okay well that's where the answer is about expletives and foul language there are rules and we cannot say them and you can definitely talk about choosing when you write it back to your hungry boys and you may make lists of things that have or do not have commas because it is up to you and then as you might guess, I will ask you to share what you're saying back on also to tell me on dh to tell everyone else what you're responding to so like what the ugly voice says and how you're here you're answering back a couple minutes to finish up and then we'll keep going once we start talking kim what do you find that people generally are feeling right now versus and versace thinking like right now as we're starting to talk back? Is there a shift that you see people go from thinking to feeling yeah, yeah andi it's different for different people so so just like some people find making the ugly creature to be really awesome and freeing and some people find it to be like terrifying and uncomfortable I find that at this stage in the game some people start to feel great trepidation there like whom I just be back to what good will this do it? You know and on the flip side, some people start to feel like yes, you know it's the he man I have the power moment right? And my goal is for the former unlike unlike with the ugly creature where like I have no goal and it's cool to feel the discomfort it's cool to feel the elation in this point if you're feeling trepidation if you're feeling like I'm not the one who's got it in me talk back, I'm going to say, oh, make a different choice and talk back because this is this is the time if you don't do it right now, then you won't have this sort of group of people around you tomorrow when you decide to do it, do it now do it with the support and then we'll start to talk about it and hopefully we'll see like, this is the time you do have that power and so for people were on page eleven correct war maybe tell people again at home who may have missed the instructions what we're doing? Sure we are on page eleven of the workbook we're talking back to our ugly creature. Earlier in the day there was a worksheet with speech bubbles on it you wrote down in the speech bubbles what you're ugly voice your inner critic says to you, maybe it's the same thing over and over again maybe it's a variety of things under that apply the different situations right now. We're talking back to it, like, if you could sit your ugly voice down on the little chair in front of you and but tape over its mouth and talk at it for a while, what would you say? Would you address point by point? Would you say something in general? And we're thinking about how we felt when we wrote stories about her ugly creature and perhaps maybe not all of us, but some of us started to feel that if sympathy seeing where that ugliness came from, the ugliness of behavior that, like hate venom, can we address that and what we say and try to, like, you know, smooth the edges of this relationship. We have what anyone like to share first, and I'd love to hear from you at home, too. Tell me what? Tell me one of the things you're ugly voice says and what you would say back to it. Yeah, I guess the one thing is I always feel like my work isn't good enough like I love my photography and my clients love it, but I feel like photographers are going to judge me like my work's, not good enough for them, but in the end photographers aren't my client and if they don't like it what does it matter the clients are paying I have seventeen thousand likes on facebook I mean people obviously like my word even if it may not always be technically correct yeah so the ugly voice says your peers don't respect your work and you say back to it irrelevant and how does that how do you feel when you say it like you really say it back because when I think about it it kind of releases that like I don't I don't really have toe worry about them I do this work because I love this work and because it feeds my children and that's what matters yeah so is it a bit free yeah yeah like get off me I got this and on it on thea ugly voice would say why bother trying you'll just fail you won't win um and I just said that's not the truth I can do anything you can do anything you put your mind you can do so you're saying it to the ugly boys yeah uh like I think you're really talking to yourself when you say yeah yeah yeah and how do you relate to that in your own experience like you gonna talk like you're gonna talk yourself into it I do that I basically do that's a bit of a back and forth a lot of the time good it feels good yeah some days yes no yeah yeah good yeah so I think one of the things that my ugly voices to me a lot is either like that I don't know how to do something or it's really hard and so my response is that I can learn new things and sometimes during hard things is rewarding so like even if it is going to be hard that doesn't mean I shouldn't do it or like even if I don't know how that doesn't mean that I can't yeah you know I can I can learn to do with something that I don't know how to do today like I see what you're saying ugly boys but it might be true that I don't know how but that doesn't mean that I can't learn yeah yeah and is that something that you would without a perspective that you had before or is this now it's something that I've been working on but only very recently like in the past I'd be like well I don't know how to do that so too bad you know but probably in the past few months I felt like well I should like expand my knowledge and then I will know how to do it so awesome one thing that my voice tells me that I should know what I'm doing like are you a photographer you a graphic designer you watch what air you like keep yourself a title and um well, I don't really need to give myself a title because I can do all this things and okay, doing different things just because I can and I like it, and I know I'm going to find a way to put all those things together eventually. If not, I'll just keep doing it so there's that obstacle right titled yeah, wait, I don't need a title I said, I'll make up for yeah, awesome trymon for some folks who are sharing online, but we have read scorpio. Who's a regular here says that the ugly boy says you don't try hard enough and I would say if you feel that way, then do something about it and b f f says you might be wrong about the things you're saying and even if there's truth in it it's not hopeful that's what the ugly voices were no story that's what that's, what they're replying to the ugly voice right? There might be some truth to it, but that's not helpful, right? Right that's, not constructive criticism and laurie says the ugly boy says, just sit there and worry. I say I will worry because it's in my nature, but I also know that worrying never fixed anything, so maybe a little bit of acceptance worry won't go away, but instead of letting the worry like trap me I will do it anyway I will move forward I will take the step I will make the thing and worry about it and that's good I think that's a really important thing actually is to recognize like what can be changed and what can't be changed right there is an acceptance there that leg I'm a worry ward I'm going to worry I can either let that worry affect every decision I make in a negative way oh I'm going to worry about it so I better not or I'm gonna worry about it anyway whether I do it or not and I guess it would be better if I actually just did it and it's not beating yourself up for feeling the worry is accepting that the worry is something you're going to feel I like that a lot and one more from lahti who's been with us all day thank you for all of your participation who says that the ugly boy says you can't do this you're going to bring everyone down with you and no one will follow that crazy idea anyway and she's going to say I am going to succeed and more than that my success will be the catalyst of success of others I know I can do this and I will be supported I was like oh I love that yeah okay all right I mean yeah I have been talking about you know, mighty ugly, obviously a lot and planning for this class and acknowledging that it's a tough thing to sell, especially amongst like crafters and artists who want anything with ugly. It has been really awesome for me today to have you guys all here with me, like here and also here, because, like, you're all in this ugly thing leg and this is, I think along those lines of like, why would anyone want anything to do with the ugly news? Everybody tries to avoid ugliness. We live in a world of perfection in photo shop and this gorgeous, glossy everything, and you want people to talk about hardship, ugliness, and why would anybody ever wanted to thank you for this? Because that is my that's, the conversation I have every day where I kind of moved beyond the you know, why would anyone want to hear you say about it? But like why? In this world of beauty everywhere, what anyone wants to spend the time and the answer that I believe like body is because it helps all of us. It helps all of us to realize that, like photo shop is also fiction, and it may create gorgeous images for us, but it also sometimes enables us to try to live up to a standard that doesn't exist. You know, like one of the things I found fascinating that went viral online a while ago is that catalogs are almost entirely digitally manufactured. There isn't some set where they live like ninety eight percent of all the stuff down, and then they photo shopped the light better like there's, like almost nothing there and it's digitally rendered it's a complete fiction, which I found fascinating and yet still portrays it like I can't catalogs but there's a lot of talk, especially in a visual field, whether it's photography or fashion design or whatever it is in a visual field, there is an expectation and a requirement really, to merchandise to get out there to have things look lovely and desirable, but there's also a really value in allowing ourselves to compare that perfection against some semblance of our reality right now is something that you struggle with as a kind of documentarian where people don't necessarily respond to your images as well as they do to something that is more fictionalized, but that doesn't decrease the value of that story that you're telling. And one of the things that I struggle with to do is to tell my ugly story in a world filled with pretty pictures and talk about beauty and perfection.