Imagine you are a beginner in something, you spend 10 hours and make great progress in it. You compare your current capability to 10 hours before, you feel so satisfied. You are so happy that you really want to share your progree with others.
You know that you are better than most of the people in the world, because not many people try to learn that. However, it’s very likely no one will appreciate your progress. The reasons could be the following:
- You are not so good at the thing. Of course, you just learnt it like 2 days ago. Why should anyone expect you to perform really good??
- People may have seen better job from others, so they will natural compare you will those who may have spent 1000 hours or even more. Is it fair? No. But it’s the natural way of thinking.
- Your friends may encourage you, say good words about your job. But unless they understand how you make the progree would they start to really appreciate your work. That is really hard. They encourage you because you are friends, not because the work itself.
This is when things start to get frustrating. We always seek for attention, maybe starting from our birth. When no one appreciates your work, it’s very common that you don’t want to work on it anymore. Furthermore, you may also compare yourself with the experts, and even frustrate yourself more. Then, you stop working on that and think yourself as not talented.
My idea is how you judge yourself should be very very different from how others judge you, especially if you are making progress. I’m not say being self-conceit or isolated. You need to encourage yourself, tell yourself what you have learnt over a week ago, a day ago or even an hour ago. You have to be confident about yourself, because no one in the world knows you better than yourself, even the best teacher, your best friend or your parents.
Feel satisfied if you are doing better than before, then motivate yourself even more for a better job. This is how things work. Of course, you need to compare yourself with the top players from time to time as well, just to make sure you are on the right track and provide yourself some role models and motivation.
Everyone judges others too simply – either good or not good at something. No one really cares about your effort, your improvement. But you, must judge yourself more diversely, more patiently and more responsively.
Maybe a good teacher should be such a person that can judge the students in the same diverse, patient and responsive way. That’s just too hard…
Rui & Photonics 