Written by: Dr. Rachel Knightley, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
The only resolution you need this year is to create change from a place of choice and confidence.
We all know the famous mistakes with new year’s resolutions, but that doesn’t always stop us falling into those traps. Making them too big, too absolute, too all-encompassing. The kind that look like good intentions on paper but really are a fast-track to self-perceived failure; to telling ourselves resolutions “don’t work” for us. We also know real positive change happens in small steps, as long as those steps are pointing in an authentic direction: one that truly chimes with who we are and how we want to show up in the world.
What we sometimes forget is how to trust the person in the driving seat – ourselves – just a little bit more. Not to let comparisons with others, or fears about ourselves, be the story but to focus instead on the change we’re here to bring.
That’s why I’m inviting you to join me in the only new year’s resolution you’ll need in order to make 2024 creatively, professionally and personally your best year yet.
What is creative comparison?
The most common way clients who come to me have lost confidence – with everything from interviews or presentations to social media – is not about themselves at all. It’s often about how and what they’re perceiving in others, and how they relate it to themselves: somebody else may be “showing off” in a way they never would; someone’s idea is “too similar to mine”; “they’re doing it better than me” or even the polar opposite, “that’s not how I’d do it at all”.
The truth is we can never do or say exactly the same thing as another person. Which means our comparisons are fiction, stories we’ve created with one end in mind: blocking our own voice getting out there.
On paper, we call this writer’s block (which I show you how to beat here); in presentations, interviews and on social media, I call Creative Comparison: “creative” because it’s not the person already on the screen but the person watching who creates their own version without acknowledging they’ve done it. They’re the one inspired to create a character: a dream or nightmare version of the real person.
When we mentally write these versions of another person’s life, feelings, intentions… we side-line ourselves for the sake of a character we’ve created in our heads. And our own story doesn’t get told.
How do we turn creative comparison into creative confidence?
Once we know we’re doing it, Creative Comparison can be recognised and therefore be reversed.
Ask yourself for specifics. “What am I afraid, sad, or angry about when I see that image/person?” “What does this suggest or remind me of?” “What feelings might I be attributing to that creator that are really going on in my head, not theirs?”
Creative confidence
The more honestly you write down or say your answers aloud, the greater your clarity about yourself and the true situation. Clarity allows focus, focus is what’s inside confidence, and what’s inside creativity. It puts you back in the driving seat, ready to make conscious, positive choices based on what you want instead of what you fear. It stops you comparing and starts you creating.
Asking ourselves these questions without judging the answers is key. Seeing what’s there allows us to move from critic to creative, from passive to active. Feelings are never wrong, and they are also never instructions: they’re simply data about how we feel. If we can listen to our own answers, then we can resist the temptation to block instead of create.
No one can ever be a better version of you
Only you have your unique mix of experience, imagination, memory, observation and questions about the world. That’s what makes every voice unique – and not only for writers, but for speakers, presenters, interviewers and interviewees, social media and face to face.
So next time you’re tempted to give invto Creative Comparison, remember this resolution: spot it, ask it what the worries are, and listen. It’s never about making the fear go away. That was never on the menu. Confidence and creativity are the result of the clarity of being able to listen to feelings and read their valuable data. So, what’s your version of what you want to say? Bring it back to your voice, your values, your personality, and the result will be uniquely and authentically you.
Rachel builds Creative Confidence for professional and personal life, work and art. To talk to Rachel about the career and personal transformations you want to see in 2024, book a free discovery call here.
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Dr. Rachel Knightley, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dr Rachel Knightley is a fiction and non-fiction author, presenter, lecturer and writing and confidence coach. Her background in directing and performing for theatre formed her fascination with the power of the stories we tell ourselves to shape our identity. She writes and presents for magazines, YouTube channels and Blu-ray extras, lectures in creative writing and works with private clients online and in southwest London.
