Recently I was watching a Peter Mckinnon video. I mean ya, everyone probably saw it because he has a bajillion followers. It was all about feeling uninspired.
He called it photographers block . I thought that was just perfect ! The entire video is really good and it was all about things that you could do to become inspired again , or to get over this so-called photographers block .
As I started reading through the comments I noticed a reoccurring comment, or a reoccurring theme. There were so many people talking about comparison. They were saying how they can't seem to overcome the hole comparison game, how comparison is the death of motivation, and how social media is really feeding people to compare themselves to others.
Naturally I started commenting trying to help him to stay motivated. Explaining how they shouldn't be comparing themselves to others, blah blah blah. Then I started realizing that I should just create a video in a blog post about this. There are so many people struggling with this . So here it is my blog post all about comparing yourself and what I do to make sure that I don't compare myself to others .
Now it's kind of inevitable right? We have social media in our face, we have the world at our fingertips because we carry our smartphone everywhere we go. So we are getting inundated with so much information . We see all these people being so successful, and we begin to doubt our self. We begin to think what's wrong with me?
Stop Comparing Yourself to Other People
I'm here to tell you my friend that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you . You see the problem with social media is we see everybody's highlight reel . Do we even really know that this is real? That their successes real? That those photos are real? Yet we want to compare yourself to something that we don't really even know the truth behind it . The other thing is is we don't see the struggles that these successful people have been through. We don't see how long it's taking them to get to where they are today . We might have been in business for only a couple years yet we're comparing yourself to someone that's been grinding it out for 10 or 15 years . We have to remember this or the other idea is to just stop comparing yourself two other people on the internet . Now hear me out . . .
I say that we start comparing ourself to ourself . I'm sure you're kind of wondering what I mean but just listen for a second and you'll totally understand where I'm going . If we start comparing ourselves to our self we will start realizing how far we've come in our craft . Take a moment and look back at when you first started . Look at your photos, or your Creations, a few years ago . Now compare them to something that you just did recently . Don't you notice how far you have come ?.
“ Now if that is not motivation I really don’t know what it is ”
You can see your success . You can see your growth. You can see how awesome you're becoming. You can see that you are getting better . You can see all the changes that you've made throughout the years to be where you are today . Now if you would have stopped pushing forward you wouldn't be the badass that you are today. If you would have stopped because you kept comparing yourself and thinking that you're not good enough then you wouldn't be as good as you are today. So my friend stop comparing yourself to other people and just compare yourself to yourself. Whenever you start realizing that you are comparing yourself to others, and you realize that you're starting to feel down, you're starting to doubt yourself, and so forth pull up your old stuff. Pull up your old images from years ago and start comparing those to the ones that you just took. Believe me it's going to make you happy, it's going to motivate you, and it's going to make you realize that you are getting better, and that you will continue to get better as time goes on as long as you continue to pursue what you love.
Lets compare some of my photos:
So there you have it. My progression from 2007. Whenever I choose to compare myself to myself I begin to feel so much dang better. I see how far I have come, I realize how much I have grown as an individual and a creative. Then, I become inspired to do more, get better, try harder.
“So lets stop comparing ourselves to other people. Lets just compare ourselves to ourselves. ”
Can you relate? Leave a comment below! I would love to hear how you avoid the Photographers block, how to avoid getting uninspired, how you find your motivation to continue to do what you love.
Wishing you nothing but the most positive 2019!
Bessie