Deplatforming Your Inner Critic |
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Bob Fosse believed he was unhappy because he wasn't a star, yet he may have devalued himself if he was.
Whether success is or isn't meaningful, and how much if it is, depends on the person perceiving it.
We can learn to deplatform our inner critic, instead of wasting time arguing against it.
The 2019 miniseries on FX, Fosse/Verdon, about the eternally linked lives of director Bob Fosse and actress Gwen Verdon, highlights the pursuit and acquisition of perfection. Engulfed by success, Bob continues to struggle to extract any meaning or joy from it. There’s aways a place that he can’t seem to get to, thus he’s always left reaching.
At the beginning of the series, we learn of his dream to be the next Fred Astaire. With all of Fred’s talent, Bob appears bereft of a quality repeatedly noted but never fleshed out, that thing that makes someone a star. Whether it’s agreeableness, charisma, some combination, or something else altogether, Bob can’t grab hold of what lies beyond himself. So, he’s forever left settling—for Oscars, Tonys, and Golden Globes. In conjunction, they reflect back to him the person he’ll never be. While his unhappiness simply appears to stem from that reality, we later learn about his other struggles and general beliefs.
Bob is revealed to suffer from bipolar disorder, which chronically leaves him........