My Best Work Is Ahead of Me

A personal declaration

I just spent the last hour looking at someone else’s Instagram feed. She’s a calligrapher. A very beautiful and incredibly talented calligrapher. I started doing calligraphy about a year ago, and from the few comments that I read on her Instagram feed, it appears that she started around the same time that I did. But why does her work look so much better than mine?

Her Instagram feed is perfection. There’s a focus to her work and there’s an incredible range and depth to her skills. At first glance, it appears as if she’s a pro who has been doing this for ten years.

My Instagram feed makes me look like a total beginner. It lacks focus and I don’t have anywhere near the range of skill that she has. I mean, in addition to using regular ink for her calligraphy, she’s even mastered using water colors! What have I mastered? Absolutely nothing.

Maybe I’m being a little too hard on myself, but I can’t help it. I’ve fallen into that “compare-despair” trap that James Altucher talks about and now I can’t get up.

But I must get up.

I’ve been working on myself lately. I’ve been working on thinking positive, good and happy thoughts instead of negative ones. My mind has been so negative lately and it’s bringing me down, so in order to pull myself back up, I have intentionally started changing my negative thoughts to positive thoughts with simple “I Am” statements that I actually say outloud.

I am gifted and talented in the work that I do.

I am blessed beyond my wildest imaginations.

I am grateful for the gift of creating beautiful things that other people love and enjoy.

I am confident in who I am in Christ; He has given me everything that I need to succeed.

There, I’m starting to feel much better.

Before I log out of Instagram for the evening, I scroll all the way down to the very beginning of that beautiful calligrapher’s Instagram feed and there it is: her first work. It was nothing like the perfection of her current work. I could tell that she was just practicing her craft and then sharing it with the world.

Seeing her first work — that not so perfect, beginning work — brought me a little relief. Why? Because it made me realize that she didn’t start out being perfect. She didn’t start out with impeccable focus. She didn’t start out with a wide range of skills. She had to grow to that place.

When I look back at the calligraphy photos from my own Instagram feed, I can see the growth in my work as well, and wow, I have come such a long way.

I started out not knowing one thing about calligraphy, but now there are actually people who pay me to do calligraphy for them.

My skills are a thousand percent better than when I first started, and even though I still have a lot more work to do to improve, I am happy with what I have accomplished so far.

I don’t know where the next year will take me, but I do know this: my best work is ahead of me. My best calligraphy, my best writing, my best everything is still out in front of me. I haven’t peaked yet. And I have no real reason to compare and despair. I am on my own personal journey that only God knows the ending to, and if I’m still alive, then it means that I still have work — good work — to do.