I am my biggest critic. I am also my biggest supporter. How I think through life, though, is not solo, like a soliloquy or contemplative thought. Rather, it is conversational, with soliloquy like speeches. It’s technically a soliloquy since it’s myself to whom I am speaking, though, more technically, it’s some alter ego to whom I am speaking that will engage in conversation with me. You figure it out what it actually is because I don’t particularly care. 🙂

I mostly carry out these conversations with myself in my mind, but I will sometimes do it verbally. When I do that is when I know or feel that that, psychologically, physically hearing it will make a difference compared to just hearing the thoughts. Pep talks to myself are pretty much always done out loud, for example. However, these conversations with myself are not the same verbally as psychologically. That’s because when the conversations are in my mind, they are imagined to be with another person rather than another version of myself. It is me being projected through this other person, but it is imagined to be another person. The technique just works better for me, though I would say if you were to be critical about how these choices of conversation with self might be silly, a clone of yourself as a conversation partner would be just as silly as someone else, even if you had a twin!

In the past decade or so, this alter ego self-critic of mine has been Dr Phil McGraw. I love his often harsh, strike at the heart of the problem, style, along with his sense of humour. He can be very supportive as well, for one’s successes. He and I do have the same ENTJ “Fieldmarshall” Myers-Briggs system personality, after all, so it’s not surprising I like him so much.

Over the past few years, through watching more and more clips of shows like America’s Got Talent, Britain’s Got Talent and X-factor. I’ve gotten used to judge Simon Cowell‘s style. There are lots of similarities to Dr Phil, I think, in terms of not putting up with a lot of nonsense. Simon’s harsher, though probably in part for entertainment factor whereas I think Dr Phil is more genuine. The actual reason doesn’t matter. I have warmed to Simon’s style. The sense of humour is great for both, albeit different. I’ll just analogize that as British versus American humour, which I tend to prefer British. Simon doesn’t get nearly as excitable as Dr Phil can when a good opportunity presents itself, which I’m not crazy about but I think it’ll help keep a calming presence for me. What took me a while to get used to was Simon’s cockiness aura. That I didn’t like. However, since my self conversation partner is a projection of me, I think I can keep that to a tolerable level if I had Simon as a self-conversation partner than Dr Phil. I also love the British accent, which Dr Phil does not have. Finally, Simon is better at doling out gushing praise than Dr Phil, again, possibly for entertainment value more than sincerity, but reason doesn’t matter for my needs. I trash talk myself just as much for good as bad.

In light of all that, in 2017, I will have Simon Cowell as my inner critic voice, replacing Dr Phil. This should be a lot of fun! I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll report back on how it goes from time to time. 🙂

If you’re not familiar with Simon Cowell, I wasn’t able find any good summary video of him on these talent shows, which is the only scenario through which I know him. It will be that version of him that will be my inner critic and support voice, not some other. The best summary example I found was this audition from 2009. A more real version of Simon follows via an interview with Piers Morgan on Piers’ show about people’s life stories. Hopefully, this will give you a decent idea what I’m getting myself into. 😉