God

What's that voice inside that says: "Maybe you should try to take a picture over there!" or "Why don't you write a little bit about creativity?" or "You could make a video about your walk in nature."

I've never talked about this before, but I want to write about this voice. It's the voice of your inner creator, your inner artist. I've discovered this voice by reading the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I mentioned this book a while ago, but I think I'm going to talk about it a whole lot more because I love it so much.

It's fun to think of your creations as if they were made by someone else. By the voice of the creator inside. Julia Cameron calls this the voice of God. I was a little bit skeptical about calling it that at first. I mean, I've never considered myself as a big believer. I wasn't really raised with going to the church or anything. I believe in evolution and the big bang and everything.

But I went really open-minded into this book and I just started calling it God, because it really feels liberating to hand over all your troubles to a "God".

Julia also talks about another voice inside. She calls this your inner critic. She even has a name for her own critic as if this voice is also completely a different person: she calls him Nigel. I'm paraphrasing: "Nigel is a gay, British, interior decorator, with insanely high standards I can never manage to attain. But when he says something negative I just say: thank you for sharing Nigel. And I move on."

Nigel of course isn't a real person, but he represents your inner critic. In other words: it's your ego that doesn't want to look foolish to the world by trying out new things and doing them badly. And this is exactly what Cameron is advocating to do. You must be willing to create bad art because it is often a stepping stone where you are learning a new technique, or you're gaining a new insight. Those will help you with later work.

So if your inner critic is your ego, then what is this "God" voice? Well, it's the tiny voice inside that is basically rooting for you, and giving you all these little suggestions like: "Why don't you pick up a pen and start drawing?"