How many good ideas never came to life because of a single comment? Sometimes you want to try a new style, post a video, speak to a camera, or show a little more of your personality. You do not know where that idea might lead, but something about it excites you.
Then someone tells you it is not your thing. That a real artist would never do that. And you start to doubt yourself.
One opinion can silence an idea
The hardest part is that one comment can be enough to kill an idea that might have changed your career. You do not give it up because you lack talent. You give it up because someone else made you stop believing in it.
As artists, we also express ourselves through the way we share our work and communicate. Trying something different and showing our personality are part of that process. When every attempt depends on approval from others, we hand over decisions that belong to us.
Where is your attention?
In the original video, I talk about a photograph of Michael Phelps that I saw in a post. One detail caught my attention: as the swimmers race toward the finish, a rival turns his head to look at Phelps. Phelps keeps looking ahead.
To me, that image captures something we experience as artists. There will always be people telling us what we should do, what we should post, or how we should behave. In the middle of all those opinions, we can lose sight of what we wanted to build.
The question that matters to me is not what those people think. It is who you are in that photograph: the swimmer focused on his own goal, or the one who stopped watching his lane to see how someone else was doing things?
Authenticity means staying on your own path
Ask yourself whether your decisions come from what you want to express or from fear of what someone might say. That fear can stop you before you even try an idea and discover what you could do with it.
The day you stop running your own race to live through what everyone else is doing, you have already lost something, even if you reach the finish: your focus on your own path.
Are you focused on your goal or on everyone else?
Watch the original video
The original video is in Spanish. This article shares my reflections in English.
You can read the full reflection above in English, or watch me discuss it in the original TikTok video.
