One of the biggest mental setbacks I have is the fear that I’m not as great as the people I admire and aspire to be like (artists, bloggers, entrepreneurs, etc). Those beautiful creative professionals seem like they have everything together so effortlessly and they continue to surprise me with their ability to stay fresh, relevant, and inspirational. Despite knowing that they all had to start somewhere, I always find myself feeling so far behind with so much left to go. Why do I feel like I have to start big and so close to the end?
I keep forgetting that you don’t begin a success. You become a success. If I continue overvaluing others and undervaluing myself then I will never be able to reach my full potential – emotionally, monetarily, or otherwise. This, just like eeeeverything else, is a work in progress and the first thing I need to do is be more aware of how this has held me back. There is always room for more voices in the conversation and my contribution is worthwhile as long as I believe in what I say and do. The only person who can diminish my talent is myself. I cannot give power to my negativity and allow it to prevent my creativity from flourishing. Moving forward, I have to measure success by myself instead of others and recognize that I can only get better from here on out.
Another problem of mine is that I tend to imagine lofty goals, the kind of goals that begin with “in an ideal world”. Unfortunately this is not an ideal world. If it were, then my daydream would manifest itself without any effort at all. So while it’s beautiful to dream big, it sets up an unrealistic expectation for myself. The difficulty of envisioning how big dreams can become reality can get easily overwhelming. My new goal (one of many) is to make sure that I will accomplish something small every day. A few hundred small things will no doubt amount to at least one big thing, right?
I truly believe that all of these self-counseling ideas I have will work if I can keep them up. I know that there will come a day – hopefully soon – when I have impressed myself with what I’ve accomplished. People will know my name, recognize my work, and see me as someone worth admiring. More importantly, I will see myself as worth admiring.
In what ways do you tend to undervalue yourself? What do you do to overcome them?
(image via pinterest)
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6 Comments
I remember a short while ago planning my sister’s baby shower. I was working so hard and handcrafted the invitations and really had a beautiful vision for the baby shower. Everything was great in my vision, but when I started to actually put that vision into effect I criticized everything. When the baby shower came around I had done all I could the night before to make everything perfect, but in my eyes it still wasn’t enough. To make a long story short… when the people walked in, their eyes lit up. They were overwhelmed by the decorations and the custom placemats that I made with my niece’s name on them, the hand wrapped boxes that I created, and the custom game books that I made from scratch. Everyone was telling me how beautiful and how “above and beyond” I had gone. When they started taking some of the table ornaments home, I was baffled. In that moment I realized {Everyone does not see things how you see them}. What you think is small can mean the world in someone else’s eyes. I figured I’d share that story. It’s the story that I look at every time I think of undervaluing myself.
Thank you so much for sharing this with me. I’ll definitely take it to heart.
Wow, I think everyone can relate to that sometimes. When you compare yourself to other people, try to remember that what they’re choosing to show you on the internet is usually a small and carefully selected part of their lives. If you compare your whole life against that, it’s natural that you will come out feeling bad. You aren’t seeing the worst drawings in their sketchbooks, or how much money they’re really making, or how they feel about themselves. You might be surprised if you did.
I keep a notebook and every day I write down what I did to work toward my long-term goals. NOT what the outcome was – just what I did. This helps remind me that I’m making progress, even on days when I didn’t have much time to work or when my work didn’t result in anything that I could point to and say that I accomplished. As long as I have one thing that I can write down at the end of the day, it’s a success.
Yes, I have to keep this in mind! And actually it’s the main reason why I post both negative and positive thoughts on my own blog – so that it’s a more real and genuine version of myself.
That sounds like a great idea. I think I might steal that…. thank you so much!
love this post! going to share that quote 🙂
Absolutely, this is so hard. I often find myself in this really strange place where I am undervaluing myself and comparing myself to others, thinking I’m not good enough – and then I get an email or a comment from a blogger who is saying that they admire me so much and can’t imagine every blogging as well as I do. It’s in those moments that I realize that we’re all on our own journey, and I cannot compare myself to others nor rely solely on the compliments people give to me. It has to come from within. Such a great post!