I've noticed that after negative thoughts are more or less banned, a new voice appears. I call this Helpful Voice. I'll be moving along, and out of the blue a new thought will appear that's genuinely helpful. It gives something of the sensation of someone looking over my shoulder and saying something helpful. So I call this Helpful Voice.
What distinguishes Helpful Voice is partly the calm tone. It always offers positive advice. It's always encouraging. And it's practical. Helpful Voice never makes philosophical or theological comments. It's very down to earth, helping me do something that works.
It's easy to distinguish Helpful Voice from any sneaky comments by the Critic. Helpful Voice is never sarcastic. Helpful Voice never recommends giving up or committing suicide. Those are big clues that the voice is really the Critic, no matter how sweet the tone.
It seems as if one has to make space for Helpful Voice, or it doesn't get heard. And if the overall emotional tone of thoughts is negative, it seems to stay away. This makes sense. If someone is raging or screaming or sobbing, there's no point in going over to say "I think a quarter of an inch to the left would work better."
So the first step in inviting more Helpful Voice comments is to make space. What's worked for me in the past is to use the standard rubber band technique. I'd wear a loose rubber band on one wrist. When I caught myself thinking or speaking a "detour phrase" I'd snap the rubber band, say "cancel cancel" and substitute a positive version.
For example, if I were working in the studio with iron, a usual "detour thought" would be "Oh no, I have no idea how to do this!" Cancel cancel. Substitute thought would be "I need to find out how to do this."
I also made a rule that if I insisted on indulging in detour thoughts, fine, but I'd have to leave the studio. I could go outside. This sounds absurd but it worked.
These procedures developed after I realized that "detour thoughts" spiraled. One led to another. "I have no idea how to do this" never led to finding out, only to thoughts like "How did I ever think I could do this work?" and "Mother told me my spatial visualization wasn't up to three dimensional work." At that point, Helpful Voice didn't have a chance.
So I started noting down the thoughts that tended to start things going amiss. I called them "detour phrases." They're like sign posts. Their roads are always detours, never getting me where I wanted to go - or at least, taking me a very long way around.
Once I had my list of detour phrases, I could identify them right away and do my cancel cancel substitution trick.
There are other little tricks that help when things start to go wrong in the studio. One I learned from Tim Gallwey's classic, The Inner Game of Tennis, is to respond to any mistake with a long, appreciative "Ah!" (It works in playing table tennis, too. It breaks the chain of one mistake leading quickly to another.) Rosamund and Benjamin Zander (in The Art of Possibility) recommend raising both arms and exclaiming, "How fascinating!"
Both "Ah!" and "How fascinating!" make a little calm space in which Helpful Voice can appear. Ideally, of course, all of life is open to Helpful Voice. But it's quiet most of the time, speaking only when it has some practical little observation that would really help.
Just hearing it is encouraging. I welcome the practical help. More than that, I welcome the sound of a truly encouraging voice, focused on exactly what I'm trying to do. What more can I ask of a voice in my head? Well, maybe I could ask for more about the meaning of life, but that's a different story.
11:02:44 AM 
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