Comparing myself to others @kitboga

Ive been feeling a bit down lately because I keep comparing myself to others a lot. My hobby is art (ive been doing it for 10 years) and it has become super difficult for me to enjoy it because I keep looking at others through social media. They all inspire me so much, but I keep looking at their success and getting discouraged by it. I guess I don’t know how to enjoy my passion again and sometimes I just feel like the problem is being on social media since it gives me a lot of anxiety.

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@Alicia.wo Hi Friend and Welcome to HeartSupport
Thank you so much for your post, hopefully Kit will be able to get to it soon but in the meantime I thought I might say a few words to you.
I am really sorry that you have been feeling down lately, its never nice to feel like that and to be able to open up and tell someone hopefully will help and be the start to making you feel a little better. Having a hobby is meant to be a fun thing and its saddens me that you are now not enjoying the one thig that is meant to be fun and that it sounds like you are good at but maybe in your eyes not as good as everyone else?? Now that you realize that comparing yourself to others doesn’t work in your favour, you could look for other ways to find see how good you are. If you start to really pay attention to your own talent you will shift your focus from others to yourself. Spend more of your time focusing on the positive and good in your own work. You may find that you start noticing more beauty in it when you’re not busy comparing yourself to others. Your self esteem has been whacked and it needs you to give it a bit of TLC
and hopefully the joy will start to return. All we can ever do is our best and being our best self brings peace and happiness to our hearts and minds. Give yourself some grace my friend, you are worth it.
Much Love Lisa :heart:

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I’m not really a person who spends much time on social media and I heard someone suggest a reason why social media can be damaging which I can connect to, and perhaps it’s the case for you too: social media can be inherently dishonest; people present their “best face” their, in art terms they show their final piece from the best angle, they don’t show all of the work they put in to create it. All you get to see on social media is the highlights and successes, you don’t see the times things didn’t turn out as the artist hoped.

It sounds to me like some time off social media would help you to focus on yourself and, if you feel suitably inspired, your own art. You and your own art are unique, they can’t be compared to others. I’m sure that there will be other people who have seen your art and compared themselves unfavourably to it. By all means be inspired by others, but don’t judge yourself against their work because only you can know your story, only you can know the time and effort which goes into your art, and it will always have value, no matter what other people do.

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Social media is a skewed representation of the world. Your art, process, everything that goes into it is singular and individual. No other person is going to do it the way you do. Social media representation of art will also be skewed, you never know what they’re actually going through either.

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