Stop comparing yourself with the best of others
Yesterday I was reading an article on Medium called The Perfectionism Conundrum - How to Overcome Perfectionism and Its Ramifications and the Author of the article shared an interesting quote that really resonated with me:
The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel.
For example, comparing your writing process with the best work of a writer who spent years mastering his craft won't bring you anything but insecurity and frustration. You'll look at what that person made, probably after years of hard work, and you'll wonder why you can't do the same thing, and why it takes you hours to write a 1000 words article.
Too many people do this, myself included, and in many cases that brings us down and destroys any mood we have to try harder and learn new things. We're not and we're probably not gonna be as good as some professionals not because we're not capable of that, but because we didn't work enough yet.
We compare what we do in hours of work and weeks of practice/learning with the work of those who spent decades doing one single thing and getting good at it. That won't help you get far.
What you could do, instead of comparing yourself with people who are much better than you, is to allow yourself to be competent.
In the same article the author talked about how he recently started to take martial arts classes and how frustrated he felt at the beginning with the basic things he was learning and practicing again and again.
He was frustrated not because he thought those things are useless, but because he knew he won't become a professional in just a few days or weeks by constantly repeating the same basic lessons.
Even tho he knew it was impossible to be really good in that short amount of time, he was frustrated that he can't get at the level of those who practiced that particular fighting style for years.
The way he solved his problem was by trying to forget about becoming the best and achieve perfection, and instead allow himself to be competent.
Most of us are competent to do something, no matter what it is, even tho we're not the best, and that should be enough for us to keep moving forward and make progress as we learn. If you start learning a programming language, you won't be the best at first, not even after months of hard work.
However, you are competent because you can learn the basics - what variables are, how to use them, how to create functions and loops and so on. If you can learn those things, then you're more than capable to achieve even a higher level of programming knowledge.
All you need is enough patience and dedication. Working every day and practicing as much as you can will eventually get you where you want to be, but that will take a lot of work. No matter how frustrated we feel, there's no way we're gonna get amazing at something in a really short period of time, unless we have a natural talent for that thing.
This is an important lesson I've been trying to integrate into my daily thinking. Allow yourself to be happy with being competent and to do something every day hoping to get better, but without comparing yourself with those who spent decades improving and getting amazing at what they do.
Once you stop looking at those professionals and be mad about your undeveloped skills, you will realize that even the slightest effort you make daily towards improving helps you move one step forward and that's huge.
No, you're not a professional, but you're competent and that's all you need to be as good as you want.
Although it is increasingly more difficult to be the best at one thing, a way to stand out from the crowd is to mix several aptitudes you possess into your own specialty. Ex : You like history and cryptos, instead of writing about history OR cryptos alone, which are very competitive topics, write about the history of cryptos. This hybridization of competences will render you unique and makes it easier to go for it. Resteemed!
Great point, too many people focus on mastering only one thing instead of learning how to use everything they know in order to create something great. It's both easier and a lot more useful in multiple situations and it also helps you diversify the kind of content you create.
Thank you for the comment and resteem :)
Good lesson and a nicely written article. Tell me how applying it in real life works for you, as I'm trying to do the same and I can tell you that as a 'perfect perfectionist' it's kind of hard. :)))))
What I've found out to work for me - at the recommendation of others - is going to therapy to get to know myself and the underlying bricks of this habit of perfectionism.
Good luck! ;)
Thanks for the kind words! :)
The way I do it is by looking at what I want to do and constantly reminding myself that I'm not yet a pro, but I'm competent and able to do something small, simple, that will eventually get me where I want.
Every time I work on something, no matter how insignificant it may seem, I imagine that thing as being another step I take towards being as good as I want.
I even wrote the quote I mentioned at the beginning of the article on a simple background and I use it as my desktop wallpaper in order to constantly remind myself that being the best means that I first need to be bad, decent, good etc, and all that requires work that involves failure and multiples attempts.
I'm just telling myself what I need to do/think all the time and that works for me. Therapy is a good idea as well, but I'd rather go for autosuggestion and the adoption of a new way of thinking.
Yes, instead of comparing ourselves to others and trying to be professional in a short period, It's better to see this as a journey full of learning when every day we get better even a little bit. There's an excellent book on this subject: Mastery - by George Leonard
Thanks for this topic
Exactly my point! Learning is a process that needs all our attention and focusing only on the result gets boring really fast since it's hard to get as good as you want to be.
Thank you for your comment and recommendation, I'll look into it :)