Helpful thoughts on not comparing yourself to others

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This is from a classical guitar teacher, Allen Matthews at the Classical Guitar Shed. He puts out inspirational emails and I liked this one and thought I would share. It is about not comparing yourself to others.

I was watching a kid at the park last week.

Maybe seven years old. Playing on the monkey bars.

She’d swing across, miss a rung, fall to the mulch. Get up. Try again.

Over and over.

Her older brother was flying across the bars like Spider-Man. Back and forth, showing off.

And this girl just kept trying. Completely absorbed in her own challenge. Tongue out and eye on the prize.

Until her mom walked over and said, “Look how good your brother is! You need to practice more so you can be like him.”

The kid’s face just… fell.

She tried one more time. Missed. Walked away from the monkey bars entirely.

I thought about that for days.

Because here’s the thing: she WAS improving. Every attempt was getting her closer. She was in that magical zone where you’re pushing yourself just enough to grow.

Then someone shifted her focus from “Can I do this?” to “Why can’t I do what he does?”

And suddenly, all that progress became invisible.

We do this to ourselves as musicians constantly.

We scroll through YouTube. Watch someone nail a piece we’ve been working on for months. Feel that familiar stomach drop.

We hear a recording. Notice what we can’t do yet. File it away as more evidence of our inadequacy.

We go to a concert. Leave feeling small instead of inspired.

BĂŠla BartĂłk said,

“Competitions are for horses, not artists.”

He wasn’t being precious or anti-competitive. He was pointing at something more fundamental.

When you compare yourself to others, you’re measuring the wrong thing.

Because that person you’re comparing yourself to is on year 15 (or whatever) of their journey. And they have different hands, different teachers, different strengths, different goals.

Their progress has exactly zero to do with yours.

But YOUR progress from six months ago? That’s real data.

The passage you couldn’t play cleanly in August that flows now? That matters.

The sound you’re producing today versus last year? That’s the actual story.

I’ve kept practice journals off and on for years. Not to track hours, though I did that too. But to write down what I worked on and what clicked.

Going back through it was wild.

Problems that seemed insurmountable six months prior? I’d completely forgotten about them. Because I’d solved them and moved on to new problems.

That’s growth. Not in comparison to anyone else. Just me versus earlier me.

And that’s the only measurement that actually drives you forward.
​

All the best,

Allen
​

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Hear, hear! :clap:

This point has been made numerous times in the Community and needs to be repeated.
It’s often at the root of all those disheartened threads :cry:

As a ‘fundamentalist’, I do question

I don’t want to be ‘versus’ anyone :laughing: Especially not myself! :open_mouth:
Just enjoy doing what you are able to do to the best of your ability. It doesn’t really matter if you get better or not.
I think I am still improving at guitar (overall), but sometimes I look back at a song I played, mixed, or indeed wrote and think “Goodness, I couldn’t do that as well now!”
I explored this in a different thread: What’s the point? :grinning_face:

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@Jamolay @brianlarsen
Excellent. :clap::clap:

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I don’t really believe that because I’ve read this many times before…but it’s nice for the story :smiling_face:

Greetings

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As I stated, it is not my story. I am sharing a guitar teachers inspiration. It may or may not be fabricated to make a point, as many things are.

The overall message is the point, and I am not sure what your point of challenging it is, other than to try to diminish it somehow.

Why?

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Just because I never really like it when someone (in this case your guitar teacher) starts a story with a lie, I didn’t want to go into too much detail, but I heard exactly this story about that on the monkey bars before the internet era and way more than ones in my many courses for my job and now someone starts again who “saw something this week” and I have so often heard that story it start to itch a little :smiling_face: ,… it’s no big deal, don’t get angry, I usually have a tremendous unhealthy urge for completeness and honesty…

Sorry

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I compare myself to others all the time, especially if they are performing better than me. This is often highly informative and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Brian, a serious question that I didn’t want to ask before, but after Mark’s post above here I’ll give it a try now …

Is this advice to the community or just how you feel about it and know that only you feel this way?
With a great fear that I will miss something again towards you :upside_down_face:,

We all here learn early and we hear Justin’s urgent advice in several videos in the beginning and fellow forum members to record yourself to make mistakes visible, but even more often I read and say that this is good to look at your progress so now and than when you are in a slump and think that you are not getting any better…

I know you don’t care about that, but certainly 99% of Justin’s learning followers do (or 99.9999%) .

So I’m actually wondering why you’re saying that here now :smiling_face:

I’m not sure I’m missing something philosophical teaching thing/part in your story , because otherwise I think it’s bad advice…hence this input :grimacing:

@MarkPeters , I wouldn’t be anywhere if I didn’t do that very often, but of course without self-loathing and stuff, but that should be clear :sweat_smile:

Greetings ,

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Exactly: do the comparison, just skip the self-loathing :grinning_face:

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No point in copying and pasting your comment again @roger_holland ,since Mark did it already :slight_smile:

I think, you are both right. Similarly, I don’t think that comparing yourself to others is a problem really. Like @MarkPeters I also do that often. Maybe the bigger issue is: What to do after such a comparison has been made?

Am I happy with what I see?

Hence, maybe the real question is: How kind are we to ourselves? How “jealous” (for the lack of a better, that eludes me at the moment) are we? Are we able to appreciate the achievements of others without jealousy, regret and self-doubt stinging painfully? Speaking for myself. Yes. Absolutely.

Still that also means that we, who are learning to play guitar, need to be aware of our “why’s” and our own circumstances, limitations and favourable conditions.

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Aargh! Philosophy/linguistics time… :roll_eyes:
It was the phrase Just me versus me that I took issue with.
There is an oppositional/competitive flavour that sits uneasily with me, with the implication that improving/getting better is the goal.
The OP’s story was based on the negative aspects of comparing yourself to others’ abilities (even though there can be positive aspects to that). I agree with the sentiment.
Playing/learning guitar is not a competition, and my point in the thread I linked above was that improvement is not the point for some. Maintaining skills, or even just slowing down deterioration can be just as valid.
Simply doing things to the best of your ability is all you need for ‘success’. If you do, there is no need to compare (with others or yourself), although it’s only natural to get pleasure out of looking back and enjoying skills you have learned along the way.
I believe it’s unlikely I will ever be a better or worse ‘guitarist’ than I was when I started, as I’ve always enjoyed it so much. I do hope I become better at many techniques :wink:
There is also an implied ‘pooh-poohing’ of one’s previous playing skills. It’s often said: “Record yourself, so you can look back later and see how you played back then”, the implication being of course, that it was terrible. Now you’re much better.
That’s not an encouraging psychological message for any beginner. You sound like crap!
I (occasionally) enjoy looking back at earlier ‘low-level-skill’ recordings, and they bring a smile to my face, not because I think I’m so much better now, but because I remember the fun I had :grinning_face:

Hehe… I’d apply a ‘JG-advisory label’ if I thought anyone listened to me :rofl:

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Hi ,
Okay,
I remember the whole story you told earlier “to Kasper” well, that’s why I said what I said that I know it was not for you ,

:scream:
I think these are incorrect assumptions that don’t suit me in any case and I’m curious who feels that way when they type this good tip to others ???.. I experience and feel it 100% the other way :upside_down_face:

I don’t agree with you because by looking back at some of my videos I saw that I had really deteriorated in certain techniques in a few songs and I enjoyed picking them up again and practicing… and it’s great that you’re back to that level much faster now…

But I and many others with me need that “comparison” material to grow as a guitar player and I appreciate the pleasure I experience in it and grow that is where most of us and Justin are sayings things fundamentally different than you …

So I need continue to encourage beginners and slightly better players who come here for the first time to record themselves in order to get better so they see there procress and keep going on playing the guitar ( or what evere they play) , because standing still after the first few months or after first 2? years and then another 10/20/50 years of muddle through hardly anyone is really happy about that in the end …those stories we all see and they come here I read to much in the introduction topics which I all read :see_no_evil_monkey: :upside_down_face:…

Enough about this, I think very differently about what I like to learn and love the study/learning be beter and that is good you don`t care about that, but I just wanted to mention that it is a guitar learning site with all the fun things that come with it :partying_face:… one of them is at least seeing some progress for almost everyone…otherwise Justinguitar would no longer exist .

Greetings

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I have to agree with @roger_holland it’s not normal for humans to be happy by not improving in some way. Whether that be personally, musically or inventing the wheel.
Without some sort of goal or purpose what the point of doing anything.

My byline on the old forum was
Even it you’re on the right track if you stand still you’ll get run over.

My wife’s favorite saying is
When your Green you’re Grow. When you’re Ripe you Rot.

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I’m perfectly sympathetic to @brianlarsen Brian’s position, too. At some point, we are all going to start losing ability, whether we like it or not. Sure, there are great players in their 80s and 90s, but for most ordinary people I know, things start falling apart earlier than that. I am still an improving guitarist, and I’m very keen to build on that, but on the other hand when I listen to recordings of my bass playing, I know I cannot do the same thing any more, let alone keep it going for an hour on my feet, covered in sweat and blinded by the lighting. It’s partly because I was a teenager then, and now I’m… not. Maybe I could still recover that level of performance if I really worked hard at it, as I used to back then, but constantly beating myself, the ‘me versus me’ thing Brian described, is not the primary goal.

Talking about this the other day to a friend, we agreed that music is a whole ecosystem and that it is inhabited by many species of musician, often with wildly different mindsets. That diversity is actually what makes it so good.

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Great post Allen
Thanks Mate

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It’s fine to have different opinions, and I’m simply sharing mine, not trying to convince anyone else; although in practice, I think our attitudes are quite similar. I do care a lot about learning. In fact, I believe learning/trying to understand how nature (i.e. physics) works (including human behaviour) provides the whole meaning of life (or ‘happiness’ if you prefer) :grinning_face:
I’m just being a bit ‘miereneurker-ish’ about the language employed and the underlying philosophy.

Then how happy I am not to be ‘normal’ :grinning_face:
I look at a newborn infant and wonder at the miracle. The last thing on my mind is 'How could they be ‘improved’?’ :open_mouth:

She’s quite right. Two amazing stages of the same cycle :grinning_face:
Blessed are those who can gracefully accept and enjoy where they are in life and not live in fear or denial… :folded_hands:
I trust fine wine and healthy seed shall be the result of this ‘rotten fruit’ :rofl:

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Well said.

I notice that I haven’t been getting much better at guitar lately.
“I should practice more and more technical stuff”. I thought to myself…

After a stressy period I picked up the guitar again after quite a downtime.
“Fiew, i could still play. What does the voice say? ok a little warmup but it’s ok”

I noticed that, with a little warmup, I actually didn’t lose much but my break gave me a fresh ear. I confirmed that I didn’t get much better the last year… at least not on guitar. But I felt a new level op EXPRESIVENESS. It came from an urge to lose myself even more in my music, to escape there. I felt like I was BETTER AT WHAT I DID… expressing myself.

That was a moment I reminded myself that “being better at guitar” is only the means to an end; the goal being; being able to express myself in the most intuitive way possible.
I’m not an awesome player or a singer that turns heads but I love what I do and I get warm feedback from people. This is more than enough to go forward with. It cherish it now more than ever because I’m still getting better at what I’m trying to achieve

Moral of the story: check what your -real- underlying drivers goals are. Re-ask the question until you find the essence. These questions/answersare different for everybody but here’s my example:

  • I learn guitar! yes but for what? to be able so play songs.
  • Why do I want to be able to play songs? To express myself and entetain others in the meantime.
  • why do you want to express and entertain? because expressing vents a flow of energy and feeing the entertainment gives me energy.
  • why do I need these flows: the envigorate me, they make me feel alive, they make me feel my impact
  • what do those things to me? They are my source of happyness.

Get better at being happy and find out what in music does that for you!

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Lieven, what I get from your story is to look at yourself and grow… in this case in happiness, but what you do is look back and see how you can improve… in whatever form… this is the opposite of what Brian means and does or find a purpose with guitar important at all ,and how nice it is for almost everyone to look back and be happy with a video/sound recording to see progress… That’s what it was all about…personal guitar growth right?

I’m starting to forget a lot of what has written above and notice that I’m going to stop for today I think I miss a lot :grimacing:

I read a big consideration in your words, a big “check” list… which I like, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t see how this fits in with what Brian says compared to guitar/music learning or playing when you just start playing … Mark K or Eric C I can imagine that technical progress does not make much difference in their minds
What am I missing? :smiling_face:

Greetings

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The subtlety of language. That’s not a criticism. I would not be able to express these thoughts accurately in a foreign language, even though I speak one.

Not the opposite.
I do look back.
Of course we all ‘change’.

I just don’t think I am ‘improving’ as a guitarist (or indeed as a person)
I see myself as a guitarist, and if I must label myself, then as a good one, simply because I play it and it gives me pleasure.
Lieven notices his technique ‘stagnating’ but enjoys greater ability for expression/connnection (note this is what many elder statesmen of the arts experience :rofl:)
It’s all about the here and now, not what you used to be able to do (or not) or indeed what you might achieve at some stage in the future.
:folded_hands:

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@roger_holland
I just wanted to say to brian: “well said”.
I was not illustrating his story with my own. I just said…“well said”

perhaps following my story without any scoping of my own point here, made it too easy to assume.

because indeed, Brian talks about looking back at yourself is better than looking at others and even when looking back at yourself, you should be at peace with what you were, are and becoming. I kinda went off on the becoming part indeed.

I think the overlap is to be in:
“not being too hard on yourself”
and
“know that getting better at something is a relative thing when you compare goals and means to get there.”

EDIT: indeed @brianlarsen once again, well said! :wink: You are quite good at saying things well… or .yeah…you know :smiley:

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