You vs You

July 10, 2025

There’s a quiet but powerful truth that every artist eventually has to face: the only real competition is the person in the mirror. In a world where metrics, likes, and followers are waved around like trophies, it’s easy to forget that greatness in art doesn’t come from outperforming others. It comes from diving deep into your own potential, from pushing the boundaries of your own creativity, from becoming more of yourself each time you create. You vs you, that’s the real journey.

Every artist has a unique combination of experiences, instincts, and inner vision. That’s the secret ingredient no one else can replicate. Your voice, your perspective, your rhythm, it’s yours alone. And that’s what makes the whole idea of comparison so senseless. How can you compare two things that were never meant to be the same? No one else has walked your path, thought your thoughts, dreamed your dreams. So how could their success, or their style, their technique, their pace, ever be the standard you measure yourself against?

When you let go of the need to be better than someone else and instead focus on becoming better than who you were yesterday, everything changes. The pressure lifts, the noise quiets, and something purer emerges: the desire to grow. And growth in art doesn’t mean perfection. It means taking your gift seriously enough to nurture it, challenge it, evolve it. It means noticing when your lines flow smoother than they did last week, or your work carries more emotion than it did last year. It means reviewing your progress not to judge yourself harshly, but to understand yourself more deeply.

Progress becomes the real reward. A brushstroke more confident, a line more true, a composition more alive, these are the moments where greatness begins to surface. Not because they’re perfect, but because they’re yours. They’re evidence of the work, the time, the care you’ve given to your gift.

That’s the mission, really: to meet yourself at the edge of what you thought you could do and take one step further. Every day you show up, you get a chance to do that. And if you can turn that into a habit, this daily pursuit of surpassing your former self, then you start to unlock something powerful. You start to see that greatness isn’t some distant peak only a few can reach. It’s a lifelong unfolding, already planted inside you, just waiting for the daily commitment to bring it to light.

Create like no one’s watching, but review your work like your future self depends on it. Forget the leaderboard, forget the spotlight. You’re not here to outshine others, you’re here to become more of who you already are. And if you stay with it, if you keep showing up, if you stay curious about where your talent can take you, you’ll find that the most extraordinary kind of success isn’t about being the best. It’s about becoming your best.