Behind every painting you admire is a stack of practice canvases nobody posted. The masterpiece is the tip.

You only ever see the top of the pile. The painting on the wall had dozens of attempts behind it, most of them unremarkable and none of them public, which produces a false impression that good work arrives whole. The comparison you are making is between your whole stack and someone else’s single best.

Keep your own stack where you can see it rather than deleting the failures. Count the attempts behind your best thing, and remember the number next time you look at someone else’s finished piece. Then add to the pile this week, since the pile is the mechanism.