Meet Marv: Explaining the Negative Voice Within Each of Us

Why do so many of our best ideas go down the drain with the soap before we can even reach for the towel? It’s not that way for everyone, is it? We all know people who are able to follow through on their ideas and we wonder: Are they born with certain gifts the rest of us lack? Do they share some common set of actions or beliefs?

I always hear people say that if you want it, “just do it”—as if just doing it were the most natural thing in the universe: Just lose weight, just start a business, just find a wife, just learn to draw, just learn to fly a helicopter.

Why is just doing it so hard? It’s hard because we’ve got a voice in our heads that’s constantly yammering about our deficiencies and filling us with fear. But what exactly is that annoying, negative voice? What is its function? It must have an important one, because everyone I’ve ever met has got the same voice inside. My firm belief, and I’ll illustrate this idea extensively throughout the book, is that this negative voice does not represent an enemy, as some writers have suggested.

Rather, it’s a very real and integral part of our psychological makeup, one that cares strongly about our own survival. In that sense, it’s not something to be eradicated or pushed away (as if we could push it away). It’s a part of us that needs to be valued and understood. It’s funny how the needs of this internal critic are so similar to our own needs. The similarity exists because “it” is us.

To humanize this internal critic, I’ve given it a name: Marv. Marv is what my wife and I would call our oldest son, Isaac, whenever we traveled and he’d start complaining, or asking ridiculous questions of the “Are we there yet?” variety. We’d ask, “Who let Marv in the car?” By the way, if your name is Marv, take no umbrage. I mean no offense. Please just think of MARV as an acronym for: Majorly Afraid of Revealing Vulnerability.

The Keys to the Car: Specific, Present, and True

Just as my wife and I wouldn’t have dreamed of letting our little Marv behind the wheel, we shouldn’t entertain the thought of letting Internal Critic Marv take our dreams on a wrong-way drive. Yet how often do our boldest plans wind up in a ditch or stalled on the side of the road? What we need is a map—one that shows not just a destination, but directions on how to get there. We also need to keep Marv in the backseat, buckled up in a safety belt where he belongs. Marv will give you space and allow your dreams to manifest themselves if you keep the following three qualities in mind. Your dreams must be:

Specific: Dream as big as you like, but make sure your dream is specified and broken down into small, actionable pieces. Don’t think, “I want to become a baseball star” without also thinking, “I’m going to the ballpark now to practice my swing for thirty minutes.”

Present: Don’t just think, “I’ll start practicing sometime midweek.” Instead, think, “I’ll go to the ballpark at 10:35 this morning”—and then actually go.

True: Don’t pursue the dream of being a baseball star because your dad pressured you into it. The dream itself must be self-generated and it must be something you want to pursue, for your own sake and of your own volition.

It’s a point of pride for many of us when we consider the dozens of times in our lives when our ideas were undervalued or criticized but we went forward with them anyway. Our sense of pride wasn’t necessarily for the things we’d eventually created, but for the very fact that we overcame Marv’s voice and the critical voices of others. Unchecked external criticism, such as bad reviews or people not buying tickets to your show, always generates internal criticism. And people’s negative comments aren’t mere gasoline for Marv; they’re rocket fuel. He becomes hyper-energized and goads you into quitting whenever he hears others criticize you. Why is this?

You see, Marv fears for our safety and well-being. As infants, when we depended on our parents for our very survival, Marv was there, making sure we always stayed closely attached. He sensed correctly that if we were abandoned we would die. In the physical sense we’ve all grown up, but in the psychological sense, most of us have never fully outrun those primal concerns about abandonment and our own mortality.

The fear that we feel when we try something new, something particularly challenging, isn’t some petty worry; it’s actually a mortal fear. That’s why when we want to reinvent ourselves by following our dreams, Marv’s sway over us is still so strong. But like I mentioned earlier, Marv isn’t trying to hurt us; he’s trying to save our skins.

If a voracious lion were on the attack, it would be Marv who compelled us to flee for our lives. He’s ever vigilant, with his hand constantly on the lever that squirts the adrenaline into our bloodstreams and the lifesaving anxiety into our brains. He’s so singularly focused on helping us that he simply hasn’t heard the news: Marv, our lives are not in danger anymore, so please relax!

Why Marv Can’t Relax: Woolly Mammoths and the Brain Science of the Inner Critic

Nobel Prize–winning neurobiologist Roger Sperry suggested that human beings are essentially of two minds. His pioneering brain hemisphere research in the early 1960s led to a well-known (and largely misunderstood) theory about left- and right-brained thinking. The idea is that the left brain is oriented toward straightforward, analytical, numerical, this-is-the-way-things-are type thinking; while the right brain is oriented toward a dreamy, this-is-the-way-things-could-be type of thinking. While many leading psychologists still support Sperry’s idea, those in the field of neuroscience have never fully accepted it, believing instead that the brain is far more complicated than his dual-hemisphere theory suggests. 

But regardless of where creativity is located in the brain, human beings clearly have two distinct capacities: one for logical thinking and one for more fluid, amorphous thinking. So for example, when you get up to brush your teeth in the morning, your left brain’s logical functions will have all the warmth of an engrossed police detective: Just the facts, ma’am. Grab toothbrush. Put toothpaste on toothbrush. Put toothbrush in mouth. Scrub. The logical mind is geared toward survival as well. It’s ever on the alert in case a woolly mammoth or some other beast from our primordial past attacks us. The logical mind’s no-nonsense orientation comes in handy when we need to get out the door and on our way to an important appointment.

The more fluid right brain functions, by contrast, are creative and deal well with constantly shifting dynamics. The fluid brain favors artistic considerations. It is oriented to the metaphorical, considers all possibilities, and thrives on weighing endless variations. It also loves the realm of dreams and desires. So let’s pretend for a minute that you could shut off your analytical mind, leaving only your fluid mind to brush your teeth. It might sound something like this:

Oh my god! The toothbrush handle . . . it’s pink. And translucent! And when I hold it up to the light, it’s like a neon eel. Wait a minute—what is color anyway? And how did cavemen clean their teeth? T-t-t-teeth . . . I love the hard sound of the letter T. . . .

No doubt, you’d have a lot of fun, but you’d never get your mouth clean and you’d miss that crucial appointment.

But how does this all relate to Marv? Simple. There is a crucial part in the creative process in which you have to let the fluid part of the mind dominate. You can’t think about reviews, impressing friends, your paycheck, or the size of your trophy. Not that those are irrelevant concerns, but they exist strictly on the analytical mind’s home turf, with things like judgments, measurements, and return on investment.

When you embark on making dreams specific, present, and true, you have to start by diving in and immersing yourself in the work at hand. You have to surrender control. The brain’s more fluid capacities are built to brave the unknown and all its possibilities. The analytical part of the brain, still on the lookout for a woolly mammoth after all these eons, doesn’t like that. And so, to shake you out of the dream state that’s about to commence—that is, being immersed in the warm flow of a project, where you’ll lose track of time and drop your guard—it’s going to play dirty.

Here’s what the analytical mind and its pal, the meek and methodical Mr. Marv, might to say to you. See how many of these inner critic pot shots sound familiar as you think about getting something accomplished:

“This idea is really stupid.”

“You know all your friends will laugh at this.”

“What makes you think you have anything to say?”

“What’s in the fridge?”

“Isn’t it time to check your e-mail again?”

“This lighting isn’t quite right, is it?”

Marv is going to bombard you with distracting thoughts. When it’s told it’s not in control anymore, the analytical brain fights for your survival. Why? Because you can’t afford to shift gears when there’s a murderous woolly mammoth right around the corner, stalking you.

Now this can come in handy—you wouldn’t want to daydream about writing a children’s book while you’re walking down a menacing city street at night. But in the overwhelming majority of situations, the challenge remains one of (a) calling off Marv’s mammoth patrol, and (b) increasing the chances for what I call an HourGlass moment—that sacred time when an idea is birthed through action, with the fluid part of the brain leading the way.

But as you know from personal experience, Marv isn’t going to give up easily. And of all the weapons at his disposal, perhaps none is more potent than those remembered critical voices we met in the throes of our youthful uncertainty.

Disconnecting Marv from the Pain of Your Past

When I was twelve years old I was the lead guitar player of a four-piece rock band. We were a miserable group of sixth-graders. But I was the worst of the bunch by far. I was such a malevolent and egomaniacal little prick that once, when I felt our rhythm guitar player, Sean, was making a play for my role as lead, I fomented a conspiracy against him that resulted in every kid in the neighborhood festooning his purple Vox teardrop electric guitar with boogers. In the end it looked like some decoupage project gone entirely wrong.

At the time I had no idea that my negative thinking was directly proportional to my feelings of fear and vulnerability. How could I have known? I was just a kid, after all. And instead of being self-reflective, perhaps saying to myself, “This is just Marv coming to ‘defend’ me against a potentially frightening situation,” which, of course, would have demanded a level of maturity I simply didn’t possess, I did cruel and stupid things to make myself feel stronger.

A short while after the booger incident, our band performed at the Peter Hobart Elementary School Spring Concert. We played so well, in fact, that we immediately secured our first professional engagement: five dollars for the whole band and all the orange pop and Doritos we could stomach. But I was nervous. The gig was at the Saint Paul Cerebral Palsy Foundation, and aside from my other moral shortcomings, I had this terrible habit of laughing uncontrollably at the misfortunes of others. If someone were to trip and get hurt, or if a waitress were to drop a tray of dishes, I’d find that hysterical. I was afraid that I’d take one look at these handicapped people and laugh at them too.

The first person we saw that night in Saint Paul had hydrocephalus, water on the brain. His head was so disturbingly elongated that to my twelve-year-old mind, it looked like a flesh-colored stovepipe hat. A woman who had no hands was drawing a landscape with a green crayon fixed between her toes. A pretty teenage girl, who seemed perfectly normal, except that she had only one layer of skin, was standing near the stage. We could see her dark veins as clearly as we saw her eyes. When we finally started to play, the crowd went wild. The guy with hydrocephalus was rocking back and forth so hard I thought his wheelchair was going to break. The woman with no hands was clapping to the music by pounding her feet on the table, and the girl with one layer of skin was dancing just in front of the band.

We only had six songs, so we kept playing them over and over, until something incredible happened. I suddenly became aware that the voices of fear in my head (the same ones that had made me so defensive that I’d laugh at people’s misfortunes and foment booger conspiracies) had vanished. It was like a wave of calm had emptied out my mind. And in that space—that fearless nothing, if you will—I suddenly felt a sense of pure joy as all my self-critical words melted away. Though I hadn’t yet given him a name, I was already beginning to feel what it was like when Marv gets up and goes away.

Not only did I not laugh at anyone, that evening in Saint Paul was the first time I remember experiencing a real sense of purpose. I was bringing joy to people and being made joyful in return. When I looked over at the other guys in the band I could tell they felt it too. On the way home, I realized something in me had shifted. I was too young to adequately express the feeling, but it was somehow clear to me: Acting in the moment, acting generously, and doing what I love to do is how I can get Marv to leave me alone.

Fearless Nothing

A few years ago I read W. H. Auden’s poem “In Memory of W. B. Yeats.” One line in particular, “Poetry makes nothing happen,” caught my attention. Auden had written the poem in tribute to his mentor Yeats in 1940, at the dawn of WWII. The words made perfect sense. How could any poem, any piece of music, any painting, or any simple act of kindness, which is its own kind of poetry, possibly stand up to mass murderers and tyrannical governments?

But days later, when I looked at the line again as “poetry makes nothing happen,” it began to take on an entirely different meaning. In that moment I saw Auden’s “nothing” as awareness without fear. I came to believe, and still do, that both great works of art and simple acts of grace allow us a kind of empty space from which to view the world and our lives without preconceptions, without prejudice—a nonjudgmental vantage point—where we can divorce ourselves from tired ways of looking at things and then, and only then, become the truly creative beings we are meant to be. As I understood it, Auden was describing the state of mind from which change of any kind becomes possible. It was then I knew that I needed some practical methods to be able to get space from Marv anytime I desired.

No matter how much fear Marv tries to sell us, we should never attempt to banish him or shut him up forever. We treat him with respect because even though he can seem like the most annoying force in our lives, he’s always trying his best to be our protector and save us from shame and abandonment. The problem, as we all know, is that he just works way too hard. We may feel like shoving a dirty sock in his mouth but what we really need to do is give him a cup of coffee and a copy of the New York Times, and tell him to take a little break. Then while he’s away, comfortably sipping his latte and reading the paper, we can do our best work. We need to send him off because the very human impulse to create is so powerful and so much a part of our genetic makeup.

There are some of us who might rightly ask, “Why strive to be creative at all? Maybe life would be better (or easier, at least) if I just sat around watching Seinfeld reruns and eating Ben and Jerry’s.” Fair enough. But my response is that following our dreams isn’t just a way to get ahead or to be well liked or to be a productive citizen. Our creativity—that is, our fearless engagement with the world around us—is the source of our happiness and purpose on this planet. Constantly ruminating about what we’ve achieved in the past or thinking about what results we’ll purportedly get in the future has a way of disconnecting us from experiencing that joy. The key to joy is working actively in the present as opposed to constantly being stuck considering outcomes.

Creativity resides in our present-tense efforts to make order from the chaos around us.

The great painter Georgia O’Keeffe famously said: “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.” When we take simple positive actions in spite of our fear, our minds and our possibilities expand. On the other hand, whenever we get wrapped up in negativity, our minds (and our possibilities) contract. The actions we take don’t have to be huge or heroic. They might be terribly modest things, like saying thank you to a restaurant server (and meaning it) or making your wife some banana pancakes for the sole reason of seeing her smile. Just as there are specific steps to be taken in the service of our career-oriented dreams, there are specific steps to be taken in the service of the larger dream we all have for ourselves: the dream of one day being happy, impassioned, and fulfilled.

Excerpted from Let Me Out: Unlock Your Creative Mind and Bring Your Ideas to Life by Peter Himmelman