Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic

by Neal Allen, Anne Lamott (Foreword by)

Overview

In this life-changing book, writer and spiritual coach Neal Allen, teaches us a stunning new method for quieting the inner critic.

“Better Days will help you get to know your inner critic, and quiet its yammering, and in so doing, get to know the person you were born to be.” - Anne Lamott, Author of Dusk Night Dawn, Bird by Bird and others

What if your superego has it wrong?

That snarky little bully in your head…you know the one.

You’ve lived under its weight for decades.

I’m a fraud, I’m lazy
I need to work harder
I need to be tougher, funnier, calmer…
I need to stay quiet, look pretty, stop showing off
I need to put others before me, I need to put myself first
I need to be perfect
I need to hide who I really am

Sound familiar?

You know that its scolding voice is harmful to you, but you can't will it away. You accept a life with short periods of peace and long stretches of stress and anxiety. But you don't have to.

In this revolutionary new book, Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic, writer and spiritual coach, Neal Allen, examines a critical aspect of the human psyche that often gets ignored - the superego.

Building on Freud’s idea that the superego necessarily forms a person’s moral conscience, Neal explains how this voice in your head develops in childhood as a survival mechanism, but when no longer needed for protection, camps out in your mind like a personal parasite. A parasite that doesn’t belong.

Through simple and engaging exercises and explorations, Neal leads you into meeting, confronting, and ultimately quieting your own inner critic.

By shedding off the burden of the superego, you can overcome tired patterns of reward and punishment, reduce the self-talk that harms you, and ultimately clear an open space for the life you deserve, one that is gentler and more peaceful.

Just imagine…if all that nasty, negative chatter in your head just evaporated ... what would you do next?

Better days are just ahead.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781897238851
Publisher:	Namaste Publishing
Publication date:	12/05/2023
Pages:	200
Sales rank:	127,035
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Neal Allen is a writer, spiritual coach and speaker whose chief interest is removing obstacles of the ego. He is the author of Shapes of Truth: Discover God Inside You (Self Published, 2021), and Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic (Namaste Publishing, 2023). A former journalist and corporate executive, he earned master’s degrees in Political Science and Eastern Classics. He lives with his wife the writer, Anne Lamott, in Northern California.

Anne Lamott is the author of many best sellers. Her seven novels include Rosie and Imperfect Birds. Her twelve non-fiction works include Bird by Bird, Operating Instructions, Help Thanks Wow, and most recently, Dusk Night Dawn. She lives in Northern California with her husband and author of Better Days, Neal Allen.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One - Hello, Parasite

A parasite whispers to me, delivering a running commentary and haranguing me with nonstop advice. Attached to my cranium, it bypasses my ears and drills straight into my mind. It’s mostly a nag and fearmonger, but now and again this bloodsucker calls me names. “Fraud.” “Idiot.” “Loser.” I seldom notice it, so I don’t really think it’s there. But left to its own devices, the messages will cut through all the time, damaging my psyche day after day.

My wife calls hers The Governess. Mine’s The Gremlin. You have one, too. Everybody does. It’s your inner critic.
If you wake up confident and raring to go, by noon it has beaten your self-esteem to a pulp. It warns you of all your potential screw-ups – next week’s and the one coming in ten seconds. It makes you feel miserable, or less-than, or unwanted, or doomed. It’s your own personal, relentless, constant buzzkill.

If you’ve been a little frustrated in your on-again, off-again quest for satisfaction, ease, or consistent love, follow me. The path to personal nirvana is routed through your inner critic. It isn't you; it’s your own personal parasite that torments you with bad thoughts, pressures you to perform perfectly or not at all, sneers at your mistakes, separates you from your family, and keeps you relentlessly uncertain about yourself.

Freud discovered this parasite more than 100 years ago*. Its scientific name in English is “superego”. You’ve got one attached to you, I’ve got one, we’ve all got one. Freud believed that it was necessary in human development, and that its purpose was to override our impulses and keep us in line, socially and ethically. Another name for it is “conscience,” which sounds good and helpful. It’s a miniature storehouse of the social rules and conventions, personalized for you. Freud wouldn’t have called it a parasite: He believed that it was fully embedded in a three-part human personality, nestled in as a part of the core self. He said the superego is you just as much as your survival and libido impulses – your instincts – are you.

I beg to differ. I’ve gotten to know my parasitic superego. It’s a construction, a facsimile of a person, with its own distinct personality. It doesn’t sit inside me. It hovers just outside, a whisperer. It’s a humanoid creature. I have conversations with it. It’s about as embedded and present as a four-year-old’s imaginary friend.

The parasite and its foul mouth are the bad news. The good news is that I have quieted mine, and you can immobilize yours, too. It’s pretty simple. If you long for a life of freedom, of peace of mind and satisfaction, I can show you how.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Hello, Parasite
Chapter 2 - First Grade: Paradise Lost
Chapter 3 - Meet Your Inner Critic
Chapter 4 - Confront Your Inner Critic
Chapter 5- Take Charge
Chapter 6 - Grow Up and Relax
Chapter 7 - Tame the Parasite
Chapter 8 - Follow Your Nose to Freedom
Chapter 9 - Civilization and Its Discontents
Chapter 10 - What Me Worry?
Chapter 11 - Enjoy Being Ordinary
Chapter 12 - I See You, Superego
Chapter 13 - Repeating Questions
Chapter 14 - Identify Your Defenses
Chapter 15 - Waste Your Time
Chapter 16 - God and Religion
Chapter 17 - Love
Chapter 18 - Better Days
Appendix: Reading Group Guide

Editorial Reviews

2023-09-20
With this debut motivation work, Allen teaches harried readers how to tune out their own negativity.

As the saying goes, we’re all our own toughest critics—we all, per the author, carry judgmental voices inside our heads that second-guess our decisions, undermine our successes, and chastise us for our mistakes. “My wife calls hers The Governess,” writes the author. “Mine’s The Gremlin. You have one, too. Everybody does. It’s your inner critic. If you wake up confident and raring to go, by noon it has beaten your self-esteem to a pulp.” Psychology has known about the inner critic for a long time: Freud called it the superego. Some call it the conscience. The author thinks of it as a parasite—an entirely unhelpful entity that feeds off our own insecurities. According to him, understanding the way the inner critic operates is key to confronting and silencing it. Developed as a tool for socialization when we are children, our inner critic reminds us to follow the rules imposed upon us by those around us, including parents, teachers, authority figures, and even our peers. As we age, we outgrow the need for this inner critic—even if the inner critic doesn’t get the message. With this book, Allen seeks to help the reader take back control from that judgmental voice. Offering a mix of exercises designed to help isolate and quiet negative thoughts and anecdotes from Allen’s long quest to conquer his own critic, the author demystifies this strange creation that is the human mind. As a means of challenging the superego, Allen encourages readers to do some of the very things that the inner critic proscribes, like purposefully wasting time and reveling in one’s ordinariness. He also treads into more philosophical territory, discussing the relationship between the inner critic and concepts such as love and God.

Allen writes with the breeziness of a man who has successfully gotten his superego to put a sock in it. Here he raves about the joys of letting go of the need to be a “special” person: “If I don’t have to be special, if I don’t have to spend all my time maintaining a valued self-image, if I’m not worried about being judged, then I can discover how fun it is to watch the world unfold without having a stake in it.” Though the foreword by author Anne Lamott might suggest this guide is specifically geared toward silencing the inner critic as it applies to writing, Allen’s project is much broader: he proposes a way of living in the world unrestricted by the harsh and arbitrary judgments of our least enjoyable selves. The exercises he provides are targeted and easy to perform. Some may balk at the idea of sloughing off their “conscience,” but Allen is not advocating for immorality or even a lack of self-discipline—the goal of this guide is to help the reader to live more intentionally by eliminating an unintentional decision-making party from the conversation.

A novel and well-articulated approach to intentionality.

Kirkus Reviews

“No other system has ever so efficiently broken through my lifelong sense of isolation as the work you are about to encounter, and at the same time, been so welcoming and even fun. Better Days will help you get to know your inner critic, and quiet its yammering, and in so doing, get to know the person you were born to be.” - Anne Lamott, author of Dusk Night Dawn, Bird by Bird and others

"In Neal Allen’s book, you’ll find a tool to help meet one of the most daunting challenges to a better life: That voice that has taken up residence inside you and berates, cajoles, warns you every step of the way. The tool can help you sleep better, work better, help you find a sense of ease in your life."- Jeff Greenfield, Politico writer and veteran TV network political analyst

“What if love is just the way things are when I’m not separated from things?” Neal Allen asks us at the end of this luminous jewel of a book. With penetrating clarity and lightheartedness, the author walks us through a remarkably accessible and effective method for dismantling the critical voice that has convinced almost all of us that we are separate and doomed. The spaciousness and ease that flow into the space that bossy little “gremlin” used to take up transform daily life from an anxious trudge into a tender adventure. Highly recommended.” - Mirabai Starr, author of Caravan of No Despair and Wild Mercy

“I happened to read Better Days on a day that was not one of my best and found such help in Allen's simple, direct, and above all, useful insights. Reading this book feels like having a wise and keenly observant uncle tell you everything they've learned about how to not be miserable. If you're ready to stop being an asshole to yourself and need more than fluffy affirmations, this book is for you.” - Nadia Bolz-Weber, podcast host of The Confessional, author of Shameless

“There are great tools here to step out of the clutches of the critical inner voices that undermine your true spirit. Tame the critic and open the gate to inner well-being. Neal takes you by the hand and leads you out of the thicket and brambles of self-criticism to the meadow of well-being. Let him guide you.” - Jack Kornfield, Author of A Path With Heart

"A playful and compassionate book about confronting the mental chatter that keeps us from mental peace and quiet. Neal Allen writes as a friend and guide ready to put an arm around you and say, “Let’s see if we can get the neighbors to pipe down a bit.” – Kate Bowler, author of No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear)and Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved)

"This book is an invitation to separate the helpful parts of what we call our ego from the defensive, self-righteous, and sullen parts of it that no longer serve us. Allen shows readers that there is a more joyful, honest, and peaceful way to exist once the harsh critic within is understood and transformed." - Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Life

"In Better Days, the mean, soul-crushing voice we all endure is addressed by Neal Allen with grace and wisdom born of direct experience. His kind voice models all that he is teaching so that as we read, we are steeped in kindness itself. Beautiful. - Geneen Roth, bestselling author of Women Food and God

"A novel and well-articulated approach to intentionality." - Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher