 So, I have a question here today, it's from John and John asks, I talk a lot about the inner critic in my videos and what is the alternative to this? So if you're dropping the inner critic, if you're trying to calm the inner critic or even reconcile with it, which I talk about, where does that leave us? What's the alternative? Because it's one thing to give up something, to detach from something, but then where are you? You know, what's this other mindset going to be like? And this is actually, I wanted to talk about this because this is the topic of my next book that I'm working on. And if you would ask me years ago, whether I was going to write on this topic, I would have said no way, okay? Because the topic of the book is on, what I'm just going to refer to it as, is intuition. And you know, you can probably understand maybe in the past why I was reluctant to focus on that topic because there's a lot of mystery around that word and it can seem very obscure. But the more I look into it and kind of conceptualize it as an alternative to the inner critic, the more I learn about it and the more I see it as the best way to think about this, okay? So what we're talking about here is we all are very familiar with the inner critic. It's almost as if it's the voice of the nervous system. It's always preoccupied with safety. It always feels threatened. It's always, it can even become very nasty towards us, okay? And that's all to get us to comply with what it wants, which is don't put yourself at risk, okay? And it can speak to us like a bully in order to get us to comply with it, right? So if we're stepping away from that, we're detaching from that. And usually we detach from it at the point where we realize, I can't go on like this. You know, it's been so painful to live with this for so long. I'm almost at the point where I'll choose any alternative to this and that's a pretty good place to be, in fact, okay? Hopefully we don't have to suffer too much to get to that point, but many of us do suffer to get to that point. We just get so sick of it, right? But so what's this intuition thing I'm talking about? What's this alternative? Well, I can tell you a few things about it, right, that will maybe help you become more familiar with it. First of all, when we're talking about this intuition, when we have that inner critical voice, it can almost sound like this intuitive voice is another voice, and it can actually, because we're so identified and we're so used to this inner critic voice or this intellectual voice is problem solving voice all the time. It can almost seem like this intuitive voice is speaking to us. So it almost sounds like it's not our voice. Oftentimes we're very identified with this inner critic voice. So this can seem almost a little bit foreign to us, right? But the best way to think of it is almost like it's your own inner best friend, you could say, right? Now, when you start to get in touch with this, you're going to realize a few differences between this intuitive voice, which is much more helpful and the inner critic voice. Number one to realize is it's much less compulsive and it's much less intrusive than the inner critic. And, you know, that would be a description of most good friends. OK, a good friend isn't compulsive and intrusive in your life. A good friend invites. OK, or a good friend is there for you when you need them. They wait for you. So the intuitive voice kind of wants you to come to it, right? Doesn't come to you like the inner critic does. So it involves kind of more of a developing a relationship voluntarily with this intuitive part of yourself. One of the best ways to do it, and I'm writing about this in the book, is, you know, how do you actually practically do that? One of the ways to do it is something called two-way journaling. But also we can get to the point where it's more integrated. So as we're going around in our day-to-day life, we can draw upon this different mindset, this more intuitive inner dialogue, which is the alternative to that inner critic. But for a while, that journaling technique can be helpful to integrate it. But so here's, there's a few things about it. OK, what's it going to say to you? Because that's helpful to know, like, I mean, it's hard to know if you're trying to get in touch with something and you have no idea what it sounds like. It's very difficult to actually go and, well, you know, if I don't know what it sounds like, I don't even know what I'm looking for here. Maybe it's just the inner critic, right? There's a few things. It's very compassionate. It's, and you know, that word compassion is very, it's not very well understood. It's misunderstood. It sees your full potential. OK, in a much different way than the inner critic does. And it knows what your actualized story is. OK, almost as if, think of yourself as like a tree that's going to grow. You know, a tree that is a sapling will turn into an oak tree. OK, so it's where it is in an intuitive sense of where you're going or what your purpose is or the actualized version of you is like. So it has a sense of your purpose, right, and all this stuff. But when you start to get in touch with this intuitive voice, the purpose stuff is secondary to it. Number one thing it's going to be, it's going to sound like is it's unbelievably compassionate towards you and it's unbelievably patient towards you. OK, so that's what it's going to be like while you're developing this sort of inner relationship. It is you, it just feels like it is in you because we're so identified with the inner critic, right? Now, I'm mysterious about this. So the reason it's so compassionate to begin with, it'll always be compassionate, but it'll typically feel very, very compassionate because it knows what we've been dealing with with the inner critic for so long. OK, it's almost as like we're getting out of an abusive relationship and we're coming in and the intuitive voice is not going to be like, oh, you need to do this and you need to actualize and you need to fulfill your potential and you need to follow your purpose. OK, it's much more, let's slow things down here now. OK, let's rest a little bit. Let's just fortify you with some compassion, OK, validation for yourself. So examples of this, for instance, in journaling, a few people have shared with me, it's just completely supportive. OK, it'll actually say things to them that it's such a relief because the people that have done it will say things like, you know, I could never be compassionate to myself my entire life. And now, because you're getting in touch with something that feels like it's almost not them, it's much easier for them to get in touch with this compassion. So as they write down, one of the ways to do it is you ask your intuitive self a question. OK, and you wait for the answer and the answer will come and it's usually very, very compassionate, no matter what the answer is. It could be a problem that you have in your life and it'll just give you complete compassion first before it gets into any problem solving. So it's so interesting to me that when we're in the inner critic, right, and that inner critic is just rampant and we're so caught up in that, a word like compassion doesn't really mean anything to us. You know, you might read a book about compassion and say, yeah, God, that would be lovely to do that. You know, but to be honest, I tried that for a day and it didn't work. That's often what it'll feel like. It's because we're in a mindset and there is no compassion in that mindset at all. But there's a lot of compassion in you and this is an ignored part to yourself. It's a part of yourself that we kind of reject usually because of past trauma, to be honest. And we internalize a kind of a voice that maybe wasn't very supportive in the past. But this intuitive voice is there and it's free. This is the good news. But the book I'm working on now is gonna be a step-by-step guide on how to do that. And it's about intuition. And I'll update you here on the channel as I progress with that. But I'll leave that with you for now and I hope that answers John's question. And take care. See you next time.