Make It Before You Judge It

(otherworldly music) Headspace Studios. (calm music) Hey friends, it's Rosie here. Welcome back to "Radio Headspace." There's a moment that happens almost every time I sit down to write. It doesn't matter how long I've been doing this. It doesn't matter how many pages I've written, how many things I've shared, how many times I've pressed "publish," the moment still comes. I open the document, I type a sentence, maybe two, and then almost immediately, a voice shows up. "This isn't good. Who do you think you are? No one needs to read this. No one cares." It's incredible how fast it arrives. Before the piece even exists, before there's anything to really judge, the judgment is already there. And if I'm honest, for a long time, I believed it. I thought the discomfort meant something was wrong, that if writing felt this vulnerable, this exposed, then maybe I shouldn't be doing it. Maybe the voice was trying to protect me from something. But over time, I started to notice something. The voice wasn't responding to the quality of the work. It was responding to the act of being seen. Because writing, at least for me, isn't about putting words on a page. It's about letting other people into my mind, letting them see how I think, how I feel, what I question. And that can feel intimate, uncomfortably so. I think anyone that's ever created anything can feel that. There's a particular type of insecurity that comes with creative work. It's not like completing a task where the outcome is clear. It's not like solving a problem with the right answer. It's offering something that is subjective, personal, and open to interpretation. And once it's out there, it doesn't belong to you in the same way anymore. People will read through it with their own lens. Some will resonate, some won't. Some will misunderstand it entirely. And that part of you that wants to be liked, understood, approved of, gets very, very loud about that. So the inner critic steps in early. And not to say that it's inaccurate, it's trying to stop the exposure. It's trying to keep you out of the line of fire. I've had moments where I've written something that felt honest, something that felt real, and my first instinct was not to share it, it was to delete it, because it's safer that way, right? And look, sharing content isn't for everyone. I found that most of the creative people I know are also some of the most sensitive to criticism. It's not enough that my own internal mechanism is trying to tear me down. I don't need a stranger to do it too. Mindfulness, however, has helped me approach that moment differently. It's not silencing the voice because that doesn't really work, but it's recognizing it for what it is. It's a thought, not a fact. So instead of stopping the voice when it shows up, I try to notice it. I say,...