Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic - Softcover

Allen, Neal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1897238851 ISBN 13: 9781897238851

Publisher: Namaste Publishing, 2023

Synopsis

In this life-changing book, writer and spiritual coach Neal Allen, teaches us a stunning new method for quieting the inner critic.

“Better Days will help you get to know your inner critic, and quiet its yammering, and in so doing, get to know the person you were born to be.” - Anne Lamott, Author of Dusk Night Dawn, Bird by Bird and others

What if your superego has it wrong?

That snarky little bully in your head…you know the one.

You’ve lived under its weight for decades.

I’m a fraud, I’m lazy
I need to work harder
I need to be tougher, funnier, calmer…
I need to stay quiet, look pretty, stop showing off
I need to put others before me, I need to put myself first
I need to be perfect
I need to hide who I really am

Sound familiar?

You know that its scolding voice is harmful to you, but you can't will it away. You accept a life with short periods of peace and long stretches of stress and anxiety. But you don't have to.

In this revolutionary new book, Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic, writer and spiritual coach, Neal Allen, examines a critical aspect of the human psyche that often gets ignored - the superego.

Building on Freud’s idea that the superego necessarily forms a person’s moral conscience, Neal explains how this voice in your head develops in childhood as a survival mechanism, but when no longer needed for protection, camps out in your mind like a personal parasite. A parasite that doesn’t belong.

Through simple and engaging exercises and explorations, Neal leads you into meeting, confronting, and ultimately quieting your own inner critic.

By shedding off the burden of the superego, you can overcome tired patterns of reward and punishment, reduce the self-talk that harms you, and ultimately clear an open space for the life you deserve, one that is gentler and more peaceful.

Just imagine…if all that nasty, negative chatter in your head just evaporated ... what would you do next?

Better days are just ahead.

About this title

About the Authors

Neal Allen is a writer, spiritual coach and speaker whose chief interest is removing obstacles of the ego. He is the author of Shapes of Truth: Discover God Inside You (Self Published, 2021), and Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic (Namaste Publishing, 2023). A former journalist and corporate executive, he earned master’s degrees in Political Science and Eastern Classics. He lives with his wife the writer, Anne Lamott, in Northern California.

Anne Lamott is the author of many best sellers. Her seven novels include Rosie and Imperfect Birds. Her twelve non-fiction works include Bird by Bird, Operating Instructions, Help Thanks Wow, and most recently, Dusk Night Dawn. She lives in Northern California with her husband and author of Better Days, Neal Allen.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One - Hello, Parasite

A parasite whispers to me, delivering a running commentary and haranguing me with nonstop advice. Attached to my cranium, it bypasses my ears and drills straight into my mind. It’s mostly a nag and fearmonger, but now and again this bloodsucker calls me names. “Fraud.” “Idiot.” “Loser.” I seldom notice it, so I don’t really think it’s there. But left to its own devices, the messages will cut through all the time, damaging my psyche day after day.

My wife calls hers The Governess. Mine’s The Gremlin. You have one, too. Everybody does. It’s your inner critic.
If you wake up confident and raring to go, by noon it has beaten your self-esteem to a pulp. It warns you of all your potential screw-ups – next week’s and the one coming in ten seconds. It makes you feel miserable, or less-than, or unwanted, or doomed. It’s your own personal, relentless, constant buzzkill.

If you’ve been a little frustrated in your on-again, off-again quest for satisfaction, ease, or consistent love, follow me. The path to personal nirvana is routed through your inner critic. It isn't you; it’s your own personal parasite that torments you with bad thoughts, pressures you to perform perfectly or not at all, sneers at your mistakes, separates you from your family, and keeps you relentlessly uncertain about yourself.

Freud discovered this parasite more than 100 years ago*. Its scientific name in English is “superego”. You’ve got one attached to you, I’ve got one, we’ve all got one. Freud believed that it was necessary in human development, and that its purpose was to override our impulses and keep us in line, socially and ethically. Another name for it is “conscience,” which sounds good and helpful. It’s a miniature storehouse of the social rules and conventions, personalized for you. Freud wouldn’t have called it a parasite: He believed that it was fully embedded in a three-part human personality, nestled in as a part of the core self. He said the superego is you just as much as your survival and libido impulses – your instincts – are you.

I beg to differ. I’ve gotten to know my parasitic superego. It’s a construction, a facsimile of a person, with its own distinct personality. It doesn’t sit inside me. It hovers just outside, a whisperer. It’s a humanoid creature. I have conversations with it. It’s about as embedded and present as a four-year-old’s imaginary friend.

The parasite and its foul mouth are the bad news. The good news is that I have quieted mine, and you can immobilize yours, too. It’s pretty simple. If you long for a life of freedom, of peace of mind and satisfaction, I can show you how.

Edition details

• Publisher: Namaste Publishing
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1897238851
• ISBN 13: 9781897238851
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200