Have you ever gone back and looked at old photos of yourself and thought, “wow, who the hell let me go out in public looking like that?” Have you ever gone back and looked at a picture you drew, or maybe an old post on your Facebook? If so, I guarantee you cringed a little bit.
When we look back on our past selves, it’s almost better if we feel a sense of embarrassment. We should be asking ourselves, “What in the world was I thinking?”, not, "dang, I used to be better."
We don’t want to look back at our old selves and feel jealous or upset because we used to be better. We want to look back see that we’ve moved past those old cringey ways and we’ve improved.
We want to see that we’ve grown, we’ve learned, and we’ve become better.
If you don’t already know, I shoot photos and videos for a living. I’ve done wedding videos, documentaries, YouTube vlogs, real estate videos, commercials, business promos, and several other things. One of my favorite parts about doing this kind of work is that I create tangible products. However, one of my least favorite parts about doing this kind of work is that I create tangible products. Meaning, my work will forever be available for me and everyone else to go back and look at.
Sometimes I’ll watch a wedding video I shot for someone three or four years ago... my goodness, the way I shot and edited those videos was absolutely horrible. How did I actually give that to someone… and get paid for it? But instead of getting down on myself and start considering a career change, I like to look at it this way: I’ve grown.
When I made that product several years ago, I was doing the best I could possibly do. Now, I can see what I should have done differently. That just means I’ve learned, I’ve gotten better, and I’ve grown.
That's what life is all about. Nobody really knows what they're doing... we're all just trying to figure things out as we go and sometimes, we get it wrong. The best thing we can do is acknowledge our mistakes, learn from them, and do it better next time.
If you’ve ever created something tangible like a song, a drawing, or a video, or if you’ve ever built something like a landscape or a piece of furniture, I urge you to go look at it right now. Do you feel like it’s better than something you could create now? Or do you see things that you could do that would make it better; things that you would change if you had the chance to do it again? Hopefully the latter.
Hopefully, when we look back at our old selves, we can see where we went wrong. Hopefully, we can see where we would do things differently. The best thing that can happen is five or ten years from now, we can do the same thing to our current selves. I'm sure I'll absolutely cringe when I read these dumb blog posts in a decade. But hey, I'm doing the best that I can in my current position.
While we don't have to be better than everyone else, we can all certainly be better than who we were yesterday. We can all strive to learn, get better, and grow beyond our past selves. Happy Monday everyone.
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