Community

As a photographer there is one saying that flies around haphazardly and it drives me nuts.

Community over competition

and you might be thinking

“GASP! TERI! HOW CAN YOU EVEN SAY THAT?”

First, the people that actually are about this way of existing, don’t actually have to say it - they just do it.
I also think community NEEDS competition within it - its what encourages and drives the individuals within that community to do a few things:
-recognize their actual desires (jealousy and envy will do this for us)
-push us to thrive past our initial beliefs (the thrill of achievement will do this)
-encourage the idea of collaboration

While many of us have been brought up to view competition through a patriarchal lens of ONE WINNER ONLY, competition can also just mean challenge and even if we don’t claim the top spot, we are going to learn more about ourselves and our fighting spirit and uplevel ourselves and THAT is a win, in my opinion. The way we view competition also comes from scarcity thinking: If they win, that means I lost - womp, womp. No. If they win, they win. That’s it - it’s not about you. You did all you could and you pushed yourself to new heights to do it.

If we can remove ourselves from scarcity thinking, we can start to use competition as fuel to become better, to collaborate more, to challenge each other and as a result the community as a whole can rise in skill, in practice, in technique. We just need to change how we view competition.

If we can see that us striving to be our best will encourage others to be their bests, then that is great competition.
If, however, we get stuck in the “poor me” way of thinking, that there is only room for ONE, then yah, it’s gonna suck.

This is what happens when we look at what someone else has in their studio and think “I NEED THAT TO BE SUCCESSFUL” or “I can’t afford that so I’m not going to be successful.”
This is what happens when we look at a project someone does and say “I was going to do that, now I can’t.” or “UGH! They beat me to it! Now I can’t do it!”
This is what happens when we look at other folks posting their work in a facebook group and tell ourselves “My work is shit compared to theirs - I can’t post it” or “Omigod, my work is completely different I can’t share mine.”

But none of that is about your community OR your competition….

It’s about your mindset.

A growth mindset would look at the other folks in the community and say:
”I am going to ask them how they did it and if I need to, I will invest in their courses to learn.”
”My work may not be to the same standard as everyone else, but I can’t get better if I don’t get feedback.”
”I have worked hard to get to this point in my career so I need to share with those that come after me so they don’t have to make the same mistakes.”

Whereas a fixed mindset has the poor me attitude mentioned above.

Use the envy, jealousy, and wompwomps, as indications that you want to learn more, be more, do more and then push yourself to ask for directions.

It’s about evolutionary behavior.

Another part of the “Community over competition” phrase that rubs me the wrong way, is that it is literally telling us to deny part of our evolutionary behaviour that is rooted in comparison. Just like the body positive movement forces us to feel bad about feeling bad about our bodies, when we have the natural instinct to be competitive, we are going to feel shitty about it which DOESN’T help us move beyond the feeling. For those of us socialized as women and other marginalized individuals, it goes a step further because we’ve only ever seen that there can be ONE woman, or ONE person of color, ONE minority and so we think that others are our rivals instead of our collaborators and then we’ve also been conditioned to be “nice” and “good” and “kind” so when we see others like us being “competitive” we immediately think of them as being a bitch or a problem. ALL OF THIS IS CONDITIONING. We need to have compassion for ourselves and understand that it’s completely fucking natural to be competitive AND it’s natural to feel bad about feeling competitive because you’ve been taught that the community trumps the individual reward. Which brings me to the next point:

It’s about paradoxical thinking.

I’ve talked about this before - 2 things can exist at the same time.
A phrase like “Community over Competition” creates polarity and black and white thinking (which ironically IS competitive):
If you’re for community you CAN’T be for competition and if you are for competition then you must be a terrible community member.
This way of thinking only serves to reinforce the idea that winning is a lonely affair.
But what if we can be both?
What if we can be kind, generous, uplifting AND challenge each other to grow more?
What if we can foster a sense of community AND then encourage competition within that?
What would it look like if we could all be in competition with each other and all win as a result?

So, yah, I’m not about Community over competition.
I’m more about community over cutthroat behavior - don’t be a dick within a community in order to make yourself feel better at the top.
But again, that’s not about competition.
That’s about mindset, insecurity, and fear.