This means you haven’t succumb to the thing that gets lots of great creatives. Ego. For me, ego is the number one attribute that hinders brilliant work. It stops people from learning, discovering, and listening to others. Humility is a great trait to have as a creative person and it sounds like you have it in spades.
There’s nothing wrong with respecting your peers or looking up to them. There’s nothing wrong with people being ‘better’ than you (though I bet they feel the same way about you). We should strive to surround ourselves with people more talented than us. That age old quote comes to mind: “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” It sounds to me as if you’re swimming in exactly the right ocean. Being in an agency environment where you’re the best would mean you quickly begin to stagnate.
And stagnating as a creative is the worst thing that can happen. Don’t forget this is a career – you want it to last another 30 years.
I recently attended a session with Amanda Graham and she said something that I haven’t heard before. “If you look at work from 2 years ago, you should want to dive behind a sofa in shame.” Good creatives always believe their best project is the next one. It’s the difficult part of this job. There’s no final exam, no finish line, no project that we think is the best thing ever. We just keep moving forwards, driven by this desire to be better. Looking back at your work from 2018, I bet it’s easy to see the progress you’ve made.
All that being said, a prolonged period of time feeling this way is bound to wear you down. So here are a couple of practical tips to help boost your confidence day-to-day.
- You will not wake up one day and think “I’ve done it, I’m brilliant”. The moments where you feel that sense of accomplishment will be much smaller. A nice piece of client feedback, seeing some work in the world when out with friends, a message from a co-worker saying thanks. Collect all these moments, write them down, screenshot them onto your desktop. Create somewhere for your small wins and open them up when you’re feeling that self-doubt creep in.
- Check your language. It’s easy to say things like “It was all thanks to the team” or “That was a lucky call” etc. Try to take credit where it’s due. Your brain needs to hear you taking ownership of those wins.
I wish I could say you’ll get there, and feel like a shark, but you probably won’t. You’ll just get more comfortable with this feeling – and that’s going to make you a brilliant creative for a very long time.