Feeling Overwhelmed? Tips to Overcome the Comparison Trap
Hello there, my friend, and welcome to this week's blog. I am very excited to be here this week to do a little bit of mindset coaching. That's going to be my focus here in the month of March. This week, I want to share some tips that I have when you fall into what I call the comparison trap.
Now, as creatives, we are in communities together, right? You may be in Anne's Art Club with me. You may also be in one of my either free or paid programs. And inside those communities, there are a lot of us. And we share our work with one another. You might also be someone who just purchased Bonnie Christine's immersion program, which started this week.
One of the things that happens at the very beginning of a new program is you see everyone else's work and it can get a little overwhelming. This can lead to the comparison trap, meaning comparing yourself to everyone else.
This is a very natural thing to have happen, but it is really important from a mindset perspective to move through it because you don't want it to stop you in your tracks. You don't want it to make you feel like you made a bad decision. You also don't want it to just make you feel bad, because whenever we compare ourselves to others, of course, we always feel like we're unworthy or we're not good enough. Or everyone around us is way farther ahead of us.
One of the things that my dear friend Kathleen Lambert says is: “Don't compare your blooper reel to someone else's highlight reel”, because you don't know anything about them, except for superficially what they might be posting in a common community.
I have three tips for you that I think will help you move through the comparison trap and continue to focus on your own work and on your self-confidence, because you can absolutely be successful whether you're in Bonnie's course learning to be a Surface Pattern Designer or you're in my Academy® program learning how to be an online creative entrepreneur with your artwork or you've taken my free program, From Doodles to Dollars®.
Tip number one: Reaffirm Your Why
What I mean by that is take a few minutes to remember: why did you make an investment in an online course or coaching program in the first place? What are your goals? What do you want to achieve through this learning journey that you’ve just embarked on or that you're continuing on? We all are on this journey continuously. It’s a continuum. Or a virtual cycle we go through over and over again.
What I like to do is write down exactly why it is that I'm doing what I'm doing and what my goals are. I actually repeat those to myself every morning when I get up. I put them at the top of the page of my Michael Hyatt Full Focus planner. It’s the first thing I do before I write down my “big 3” goals for the day.
Another really fun thing to do with your “why” is to turn it into a beautiful illustration. Print it out and put it on your bulletin board or put it inside your planner so that you see it every day.
Tip number two: Focus on The Work
Stop looking around at what everybody else is doing. Remember why you're focused on your art practice and the progress you want to make. Take out your calendar and make sure you've reserved enough time for your art each day or several days each week. You're dedicated to making progress because you want to hone your skills and take them to the next level.
What better way to do that than to focus on the work itself. You’ll see amazing progress, even if you're only able to reserve between 15 minutes to a half an hour every day to work on your creativity. When you look back after a month of doing that, you will see tremendous progress in your work. Take yourself seriously as an artist. If you don’t, no one else will. That’s for sure.
Tip number three: Celebrate Every Win
This is a really important mantra for me. I don't think that we celebrate ourselves enough. We're always helping other people. We're the first to celebrate other people’s work, progress, successes. We do it with our families. We do it with our friends. We do it with our parents and our children.
You need to celebrate YOU! You're unique. What you have to offer the world through your creativity is completely different from anyone else. We need to celebrate that. And celebrate every win, whether that's celebrating the fact that you got through a week and kept up with all the class material. Or the fact that you've been practicing and using different techniques.
Make it a practice to celebrate every win, small, medium-sized or big, because that helps refill your well. It helps you build confidence and it helps you keep moving forward. If you have a win to share, please pop over to our private Facebook group, Anne's Art Club, and share it with us. I can't wait to celebrate with you.
Pop over to Anne TV by clicking the image below and watch my vlog.
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Bye for now. And I'll see you next week.
Remember,
It’s Never Too Late to Create®
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MEET ANNE
Hi…I’m Anne!
My creative inspiration comes from a lifetime of observation. I grew up in Paris on the Place St. Sulpice and walked to school through the Luxembourg gardens. And that was only the beginning… Learn more by watching the video on my About page.
