Lately I’ve been living with someone who has nothing good to say about me, who takes every opportunity to put me down and tell me I’m not good enough. In fact, she’s kind of a witch.

She’s my inner critic.

When I put pen to paper, she’s right there with “helpful” comments about how boring and bland my words are, and her most cutting criticism is that I have nothing to say. This criticism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and suddenly I don’t have anything to say. No words come. I sit staring at my blank page, bereft of ideas, frustrated that my writing time is slipping away with nothing to show for itself.

My inner critic has nothing constructive to say. She (my inner critic is a she) only tries to shut me down. Nothing I do is ever good enough, and I am not even close to being “good enough.” If she has good intentions, she’s going about it all wrong.

You don’t have to be a writer, artist or “creative” person to suffer from an inner critic. You may have one who trashes your appearance, athletic ability, intelligence, childrearing, housekeeping, or level of hospitality. When an area of life is important to you, you may find you have a small—or large—inner voice criticizing you. Your inner critic may try to keep you from doing what you want, or it may lash out when you’ve been human and made an error.

Frankly, I’m tired of my inner critic’s B.S. I don’t need any inner voices tearing me down. If she has nothing helpful to say, she can just shut up. I don’t let real people talk to me like that—why do I let her get away with it? Here are four things I’m doing to shut up my inner critic:

I hope you don’t have such a vicious voice living inside your head, but if you do, try one or more of the above techniques to silence her. You don’t have to put up with that!

Do you have an inner critic? How do you silence him or her?

I recently completed Laure Ferlita’s online art class, An Imaginary Trip to Greece, an experience that qualifies as both a simple pleasure and an everyday adventure. One of the main focuses of her classes is learning how to quickly capture a scene on location where conditions can change quickly, you can be interrupted, etc. One tool Laure stresses in class is the “five Es”—concepts that help us figure out what we want to sketch and how we can make each sketch uniquely our own. The Five Es are: Evaluate, Eliminate, Edit, Exaggerate, and Embellish. Always on the lookout for principles that could be useful in living a happier, more artful life, it occurs to me that the five Es could be quite usefull:

Evaluate. Just as an artist evaluates his or her subject to find its most pleasing aspect or determine what is sketchable in the time available, you can evaluate your life to see how it's running. What feels good and bad, how you’re measuring up to your standards, how you’re progressing toward your goals. Taking stock of the who, what, when, where and why of life. In stopping to evaluate, you bring awareness to your life instead of drifting (or charging) around mindlessly.

Eliminate. On location, once you’ve chosen your subject, you want to eliminate anything that doesn’t significantly add to the sketch. You simply won’t have time to get every detail down on paper, so choose your details wisely. In the same way, life is short! After you evaluate it, you might decide you have some things to get rid of. Maybe literally, like that closet of items you want to donate to charity or a stack of old magazines and catalogs you’ll never get around to reading. Maybe it’s a chore or other commitment that has outlived its usefulness. It might even be a person who drags you down every time you’re together. What can you get rid of to make your life better?

Edit. In sketching and life, once you’ve decided what you want to focus on and what you want to eliminate, what’s left? Maybe you don’t want to eliminate something all together, but you can pare it down or simplify it.

Exaggerate. In class, Laure advises students to “use your creative license to exaggerate the elements to make it a great piece of art.” In sketching, that might mean darkening the values, or adjusting the direction of the light hitting your subject to make a more interesting composition. To translate this into life, choose to focus on, encourage and support the positive.

Embelish. The fun part! In art, this is where you add your own style to your sketch. In life, this is where you find ways to make it more beautiful—buy the fresh flowers, eat the chocolate, go see that movie, play, concert or sporting event that interests you. Life should be more than a list of chores and responsibilities.

Just as Laure’s five Es make sketching on location easier and more fun by giving me a framework to help me choose a subject and execute a sketch, using the five Es as a framework for living helps me feel like an artist in my own life. (And thank you to Laure for introducing me to these principles in art and in life!)

Do you have any principles that help you lead a happier, more artful life?