It may seem like a fairly irrelevant fact but comparing yourself with others affects everything about you including your dreams, goals, and objectives in life!
You don't believe me?
Ask Agnes de Mille, one of the best American dancers and Choreographers of her time, who achieved immense success in her career and set the stage for modern choreography.
Agnes started by creating the choreography for a ballet named Three Virgins and the Devil. Although she thought it was a masterpiece, nobody really liked it that much. A couple of years later, she choreographed a ballet named Rodeo. Again, she thought her work was solid, but it resulted in little commercial fame.
In 1943, de Mille choreographed Oklahoma, a musical piece that became an instant hit. In the subsequent years, Oklahoma! would run for an incredible 2,212 performances, both around the nation and abroad. In 1955, the film version won an Academy Award. The new success confused her because the dance was only average compared to all her previous works.
“After the opening of Oklahoma!, I suddenly had unexpected, flamboyant success for a work I thought was only fairly good, after years of neglect for work I thought was fine. I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. I talked to Martha.”
Martha Graham is unarguably the most influential dance choreographer of the 20th Century, although little is known about her by the public. In fact, in Arts, Martha is likened to the likes of Picasso and Frank Lloyd because of the quality of her work.During their meeting, Agnes confessed that ''she had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that she could be.''
Martha replied by saying,
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”
The truth is, regardless of the outcome we are often terrible judges of our own work.
According to Martha Graham:
You are a terribly bad judge of your own work
It is not your place to compare it to others
It is not your responsibility to figure out how valuable it is or how useful it can be
It is not your job to tell yourself NO!
INSTEAD,
It's your responsibility to create!
Your job is share what you have to offer from where you are right now, and
The key is to not let your self-judgment keep you from doing your thing.
In everything you do, Always remember!
Your concern is to do the work, not to judge it. Your concern is to fall in love with your work and the entire process, not to grade the outcome. Keep your eyes on your own paper.