It’s difficult to keep perspective when you are in the middle of something. While you are working daily on your craft you become intimately aware of your short-comings and areas of struggle.
Because of this on-going awareness of “what’s not right”, it is easy for it to consume your focus. As a result, you may lose perspective of how far you have come.
Recently, this was made clear to me when putting together a post. I went on Facebook to upload my artwork and waiting there for me was one of those automated “1 year ago you posted this” messages.
It was my daily artwork from a year ago and I couldn’t believe the difference.
There was nothing wrong with the artwork. In fact, it was one of the pieces I was quite proud of in the early days of this journey. However, the growth and progress was quite evident.
It made me feel proud of how far I’d come, thankful for all the hours I have put in this past year, and excited to think about the process I’ll make in the coming year.
That jaunt down memory lane had a pretty sizeable ROI, or “return on investment”. (Yup, I’m totally using fancy business terms) I spent a few minutes reviewing this old post and came away feeling amped up and ready to tackle my next challenge.
My takeaway to share with fellow artists in the trenches is this, make time to revisit where you’ve come from.
It doesn’t have to take long, even just a few minutes can serve to bring perspective on progress that you have made. It may not always be dramatic, or even in the areas you want to see progress, but if you truly are working every day, or even every week, I don’t believe it is possible for you to NOT see a difference in the quality of your work.
Maybe it will be growth in how you use the tools you work with. It may be in the use of color, composition, or the concepts and ideas you create. You may even see growth in an area you never gave much thought to before, but now that you see it, you have a new appreciation for it.
The other thing that is valuable about this practice is that it results in self-affirmation. As someone who has struggled with looking to others for validation, this is huge.
When you strengthen the muscle of affirming yourself, you add an entirely new tool to your toolbox.
I think most of us have no problem looking at what we do and seeing where we need to improve. But what if we could balance that with the ability to acknowledge where we are totally rockin’ it?
The truth is the only person that will be with you 100% of the time is you. So let’s build a kick-ass relationship with ourselves. #friendgoals
Revisiting past work probably isn’t something that you would do every day, but consider scheduling it at the beginning of the month (I’m looking at you March). Take a couple of minutes to review work that you did a year, or even 6-months, ago.
This could be a way to set some goals and plan what you want to focus on for a portion of that month. Or maybe it’s just a little treat that you give yourself before preparing to take the next hill. Regardless, do yourself a favor and reward your consistent effort with a boost of self-encouragement by making time to review old work.
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