Don’t let the Tyranny of Evaluation break you!
In my STUDY, SAVOR, & SUPPORT Each Other CHAT☕️🍵, we’re doing a deep-dive into our Book Club selection! This week is Chapter 3 of BECOMING AN ARTIST: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity by Dr. Ellen J. Langer.
In Chapter 3, EL goes right for the jugular by attacking our biggest enemy: Evaluation.
I love how she refers to it, too, in such a menacing way, by calling it “The Tyranny of Evaluation.” Because it really can be a tyrant over us.
When left unchecked, our fear of being judged by others can lock us in a perpetual cage of dis-ease.
Interestingly, part of this is brought on, not only by our tendency to compare ourselves with others, and our work product with theirs, but also to the limited nature of language.
As she puts it, “[I]f we look very closely, we find that while there may be similarities, there really aren’t many common properties that run through your unique experiences and mine.”
Does that matter? More than we might think.
Mindlessness can make us assume that everyone’s opinions are objective and reasonable.
Take a Moment to Imagine, Mindfully
We all say, “I got ready for work today,” but imagine the marked differences hidden in the details:
While one person may rise naturally with the sun, meditate for ten minutes, and amble, ever so gently, to make a cup of tea and slowly drink it while journaling, followed by a nice hot shower…
Another person may stir only after the alarm’s been blaring for a good 5 minutes, then hit the snooze button three times before rushing out the door, with half a bagel hanging from their mouth, their hair barely combed, and mismatched socks.
Now imagine both people express their opinion about your creative work, that took you two months to complete, a piece you created with all your heart.
Knowing what you now know — the usually-hidden details in how they usually “got ready in the morning” — would you blindly accept whatever assessment they made of your work?
What if the Barely-Combed Bedhead said, “I don’t think you put in much effort. It lacks realism, like you rushed through it.”
Haha, projection much?! 🤣 How ridiculously laughable their judgment is, knowing what we now know about the hidden details behind Bedhead’s highly-subjective viewpoint?
Clearly, we shouldn’t blindly accept Bedhead’s opinion, or put it on the same level as the Zen-like Morning Master, who “loved the vitality in your work.” Unlike Bedhead, Zen took their time examining the color choices you made, and the flourish in each of your strokes. THAT’s the assessment that we ought to focus on.
And yet…our mind often doesn’t. We’re often Not-Mindful that other people’s opinions are all subjective. Making it that much easier for us to fall into the trap of assuming that the two opinions are both equally valid.
This is how Mindlessness can cause us unnecessary doubt and self-recrimination, and it can completely alter what we create, simply to appease an audience we needn’t obsess over anyway.
We shouldn’t ignore other people’s opinions. But we shouldn’t allow them to define us, either.
Instead, Let’s Value What We Mindfully Create
Isn’t it better then, to create what we want to create because we are making Mindful choices that make sense to us?
And rest assured that, even when our art doesn’t appeal to everyone, it still has value because we created it Mindfully?
Now, let’s apply that Mindful awareness to our own analysis & judgments.
In EL’s example, both she and another person painted the same friend, Rhoda, and noticed that the two paintings were clearly different in style, even though they represented the same person.
As EL put it, if she allowed herself to get caught up in the desire to compare her work with the other painter’s, and if she believed her painting to be superior, she would “fail to engage the other painting.”
Importantly, she explores this not only from the perspective that “comparison is bad,” but in a deeper way, by acknowledging that judging her work as better is a loss to her because, she says, “I rob myself of an opportunity to see Rhoda in a new light, through the eyes of this other person.”
The Bottom Line:
To be successful Creatives, we must stop mindlessly believing that other people’s opinions are always right. As if other people’s opinions were actually objective. They’re not! They are subjective and not necessarily accurate assessments about the quality of our work or true reflections about us as individuals.
Ultimately, EL states “The tyranny of evaluation holds over us is the most important roadblock we need to overcome to achieve a personal renaissance.”
I agree, wholeheartedly. I find, whenever I’ve cared too much about other people’s opinions, a “personal renaissance” is unlikely because I’ve elevated their opinion over mine. It makes me disconnect from myself. And I need distance and solitude to recenter and reconnect with my own wants and needs.
I imagine People Pleasers must run into this predicament more often than most. Possibly to the point that they no longer understand or may even become unable to sense their own wishes and desires.
Perhaps this is the biggest homework assignment we can have in our life: Learning to listen to ourselves, to observe what is true for us.
It’s the difference between Reacting and Responding.
Now, take a Mindful Minute, to ask yourself:
⭐️ Remember a time in your life when someone judged something you created. Did you believe that it was a fair and objective assessment?
⭐️ Did the person making the assessment have experience or expertise in that area?
⭐️ How was the assessment based on the subjective opinion of that person?
⭐️ Did their opinion cause you to change what you did, afterward?
⭐️ Did you lean into the same choices or make different ones?
⭐️ Did their opinion help you to trust your creativity less or more?
⭐️ Can you remember a time when your own subjective opinion made it harder for you to see the value inherent in another person’s work?
⭐️ Might there be beauty in something that’s not stereotypically “beautiful”?
🧠🎨The Mindful Creative in Me🎨🧠
🧠🎨honors & respects the Mindful Creative in You,🎨🧠
Marisa
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