Under the bright lights of the center stage, best-selling authors Neal Allen and Anne Lamott sit comfortably in red armchairs and welcome the audience into their conversation with a warmth that breaks down the barriers of the elevated stage and spotlight.
For a moment, or rather an hour, it’s as if the stage isn’t there.
“How many people have an inner critic?” Allen asked the audience right off the bat.
A sea of hands shot up around the Coronado Performing Arts Center on Dec. 13, which drew 208 people.
Allen shares his lifelong studies
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.”
A former journalist and corporate executive, he earned master’s degrees in political science and eastern classics. He lives with his wife, Lamott, in Northern California, and they were the headliners for a fundraiser for the Friends of the Coronado Public Library.
Through his study and work with clients, Allen said he has come to learn that an inner critic shows up strongly in people’s lives at five- or six-years old. It’s not subconscious, it’s subvocal, he said.
“I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that your inner critic in some way is particularly proclaiming two things about yourself,” Allen said. “One is, you’re not good enough. The second is, you might not be loved or lovable.”
“Better Days” deals with the inner critic
Allen’s book, “Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic” dives into methods of dealing with this inner critic.
Through simple and engaging exercises and explorations, Neal leads the reader into meeting, confronting and ultimately quieting their own inner critic.
And, he led one audience member through one of the exercises outlined in his recently published book.
Lamont said she too was helped by the exercises.
“Neal introduced me to the inner critic work on literally our third or fourth date,” Lamott said about her husband. “We’re both writers, and we both have been really prone to that voice that said you could do better, you should do better.”
Lamott said she now has tangible tools to make sure that inner voice doesn’t run her life.
Bestselling author Lamott
Lamott is the author of many bestsellers including “Rosie and Imperfect Birds.”
Her 12 non-fiction works include “Bird by Bird,” “Operating Instructions,” “Help, Thanks, Wow;” and “Dusk, Night, Dawn.”
Together in conversation with interviewer Marni Freedman, the co-founder and programming director for the San Diego Writers Festival, Lamott and Allen shared their wisdom about the topic with the audience— a topic that, according to comments shared in the question and answer period at the end, resonated with a lot of people.
Freedman announced at the end of the night that “Better Days” was chosen as the non-fiction book of the year for the San Diego Writers Festival.
