Is Creative Comparison Killing your Creativity?

Why comparing your creative potential with others' polished results is holding you back.

 Introduction

Very often, and usually through no fault of our own, we either misidentify our creativity or fail to recognise it altogether, simply because we haven’t grasped the full measure of what creativity is to begin with. As a result, we start looking outside of ourselves towards other people.

We look around and see what everyone else has created and then either knowingly or most of the time unknowingly, which makes it even more problematic, use that as the benchmark to judge and rank our own.

And of course we do because from the copy we read, to the content we consume, the music we listen to, the apps we download, to the innovative start-up brands we follow and buy from, we are surrounded by evidence of other people’s creative work and efforts. This gives us something practical and tangible to base our understanding of creativity upon, or put another way, to compare ours to.

This is a problem that contributes to the confusion. It skews our understanding of what creativity is because we’re only looking at the tip of the iceberg, the 10% we can see, the creative results.

The Problem with Comparison

Comparing our creativity against other peoples, whether we know we’re doing it or not, is dangerously misleading because we’re comparing two completely different things. Very often, we’re taking our creative potential, which if we’ve abandoned our creative self, is likely to be relatively, unused, unknown, and untested potential, and comparing it with someone else’s creative results, their tirelessly crafted, endlessly edited, ready-for-the-world, shiny, finished product and then mistakenly thinking we’re looking at the same thing.

We’re not.

They are not the same thing.

Your creative potential and the results of someone else’s creativity are entirely different. We’re not comparing apples with apples here. We’re comparing the equivalent of an apple-pip, with an apple pie and then, not recognising the difference, being critical and judgemental of the pip for not looking or tasting as good the pie. It’s absurd, when one is the very start of the process, and the other is the very end. Confusing the two, confuses our understanding of creativity, but more specifically, confuses our understanding of our own.

The Hidden 90%

When we see the results of people’s creativity, which is essentially what we’re seeing, hearing, and experiencing the majority of the time, we’re not witnessing or perhaps even acknowledging, the creative process that got them there. That messy journey that moves us, from our potential into a tangible and recognisable manifestation of our creativity. That’s not visible when we’re only looking at the results.

We don’t see the challenges or the struggles that might have arisen along the way. The time it might have taken. The number of false starts, wrong turns, U-turns, missteps or stumbles that journey might have presented. We don’t think about the self-doubt, self-criticism or self-sabotage that might have been the creator’s constant companion, or all the creative blocks that needed to be navigated in order to make it to the finish mark.

Nor do we consider all the other people involved in the process, which are often many. The creative efforts from all the other collaborators and contributors that made the finished article, whatever that might be, possible.

This is the 90% that lies beneath the surface, that we don’t see, and often don’t recognise as creativity – we only see what’s in front of us and recognise the creative results.  And then, we compare our own creativity to that. Unsurprisingly, reinforcing the belief that we have none. Very easily, we become overwhelmed by other people’s seemingly limitless creativity. Intimidated by the magic of their results, we step further and further away from our own.

When we look at two very different ends of the spectrum, rank them against each other as if they were the same and as a result, draw inaccurate and unfair conclusions about our own – we’re damaging our creative potential.

The spectrum I’m referring to though, not only represents the wildly opposing ends of the creative process, which is something we always need to keep in mind, it represents the wildly opposing ends of our experience using and collaborating with our creativity too.

The Spectrum of Creative Experience

At one end, the same end where all the magnificent creative results live, we have the people who consider themselves creative, who have always owned and used their creativity and therefore banked a lifetime of experience and therefore evidence of their creative abilities. Here we have the people, who have spent a lifetime sitting at the creative table, and believing they belong there.

At the other end of the spectrum, where creative potential lives, are those who have abandoned or rejected their creativity either by putting limits around it, believing it’s in short supply or believing it doesn’t exist in the first place. Either way not using or experiencing their creativity, never gaining evidence to support the fact they have it, only banking a lifetime of reoccurring, self-affirming thoughts that they don’t.

And then, once again, confusing them as the same, we compare the two.

Just like we compare the embryonic beginnings of the creative process with the end results and fail to consider the trials and tribulations of the creative process in between, we compare our creative abilities without considering the practice, experience, time and most probably training of the person we’re comparing our creativity to. Meaning, we’re setting ourselves up to fail and our creativity to flounder exactly where it is, leaving us stuck at the end of the spectrum we no longer want to be.

What Really Matters

The simple reality is this: people who use their creativity regularly are able to access it more easily and freely, in turn having more of it available to them than those people who never use it.

We don’t need to look towards other people’s creativity in order to understand or measure your own.

Creativity is not a competition.

Ranking yours against the rest of the world will only leave you feeling like you never have enough. Your creativity is unique to you. That’s what makes it so powerful and exciting.

So, yes, look towards other people’s creativity to be inspired, drink it up, seek it out, learn from it, support it in others.  Just don’t measure your own against it. Your creativity isn’t meant to look like anyone else’s—because it isn’t anyone else’s. Honour it, nurture it, and most importantly, use it. That’s how you’ll discover what it can truly do.

The real magic happens when you stop comparing and start creating.