What’s the right range of emotions to feel around awards and honors?
You want to feel joy, pride, honor when you win an award. You don’t want to feel disappointment, jealousy, anger when you don’t win an award you could have won.
The answer is threefold.
- Recognize that awards are transient. They aren’t the work, they are reactions to the work and they will fade into the background. The good work you do will remain.
- Recognize that awards are arbitrary. There are plenty of people that could have won the award you won, so hoooray! You won it! There are plenty of timelines in which you won the award you lost, so hooray! Nothing to feel bad about!
- Recognize that awards aren’t why we do the work. The work is why we do the work. If you are honored for your work, what a blessing – but if you don’t receive an award, you still have the work…which is why you did it in the first place.
Awards, competitions, peer elections, prizes for art: these can all mess with our minds and leave us in pretty unfamiliar territory…both for people who win awards and people who don’t. Here’s hoping the next time you’re winning, losing, or being considered for an award, you can talk yourself back into a healthy mind space and keep doing the good work.