The Decency Advantage: Why Being Good to Yourself (And Others) Isn't Soft—It's Smart

I need to tell you about the worst creative decision I ever made.

It wasn't a bad edit. It wasn't choosing the wrong music or missing a deadline. It was the day I decided that being hard on myself was the same thing as being professional.

You know the voice. The one that says your work isn't good enough. That someone else would have done it better. That you should have figured it out faster, charged less, delivered more. That voice that turns every project into an audition for your own approval—one you never quite pass.

For a long time, I thought that voice was my quality control. Turns out, it was just noise.

Welcome to Dan's World.

The Lie We Tell Ourselves

More often than not, it is easier to lie to ourselves than it is to lie to others.

Somewhere along the way, a lot of us in creative industries bought into this idea that being tough on ourselves makes us better. That self-criticism is the price of excellence. That if we're not constantly pushing, grinding, second-guessing every decision, we're not serious about our craft.

But here's what I've learned after years of video editing, voiceover work, and building websites at 2 AM because I convinced myself "good enough" wasn't good enough: beating yourself up doesn't make you better. It just makes you tired.

And tired people don't do their best work.

The same goes for how we treat the people around us—our colleagues, our competitors, the person doing the same work in the next town over. We've somehow decided that there's only so much success to go around, so we'd better guard ours carefully. Celebrate quietly. Keep our secrets close. View every other creative professional as a threat to our territory.

But that's not how any of this actually works.

What Decency Actually Looks Like

Being decent to yourself doesn't mean lowering your standards. It means recognizing that you're human, that learning takes time, and that mistakes are just expensive lessons you won't have to pay for twice.

It means saying "I did my best with what I knew at the time" instead of "I should have known better."

It means taking a break when you need one, asking for help when you're stuck, and not apologizing for having boundaries.

Being decent to others in your industry doesn't mean you're naive or soft. It means you understand that:

1. Someone else's win doesn't diminish yours. There's a restaurant owner in Tyler who needs video work, and a healthcare practice in Longview looking for patient education content, and a podcaster in Dallas who needs a trailer edit. We're not all fighting over the same single client.

   
   

2. Generosity compounds. The colleague you help today might refer your biggest client tomorrow. The competitor you celebrate publicly might tag you in a post that changes your business. Goodwill has a longer ROI than you think.

   
   

3. Your reputation for decency is your brand. People forget your portfolio. They remember how you made them feel. They remember if you were kind when you didn't have to be.

The Practical Side of Being Human

Being kind is far more sustainable than being unkind

Let me be clear: I'm not talking about toxic positivity or pretending everything is sunshine and collaboration all the time. Some people are difficult. Some situations are genuinely unfair. Some days, the work is hard and the clients are harder.

But there's a difference between protecting your energy and building walls. Between having standards and having a superiority complex. Between confidence and cruelty—especially the cruelty we aim at ourselves.

Here's what decency looks like in practice:

To yourself:

• Celebrating the win, even if it's small

• Recognizing when "done" is better than "perfect"

• Taking the afternoon off without guilt

• Saying "I'm still learning this" without shame

To others:

• Congratulating a competitor on a project you wish you'd landed

• Sharing a resource that helped you

• Referring work you can't take to someone who can

• Saying "I don't know, but let me find out" instead of faking expertise

None of this makes you weak. It makes you human. And humans, it turns out, are pretty good at building things together.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

I've been in manufacturing, defense, law enforcement, construction, and design before landing in creative services. And here's what I've noticed across all of them: the people who last aren't the ones who are hardest on themselves or others. They're the ones who figured out how to be excellent without being exhausting.

They're the ones who can admit when they're wrong, ask for help when they need it, and cheer for someone else's success without feeling like they lost something.

They're the ones clients want to work with again. The ones other professionals want to collaborate with. The ones who build reputations that open doors years down the line.

And they're the ones who actually enjoy what they do, instead of white-knuckling their way through every project.

The Invitation

So here's my challenge—not just to you, but to myself:

What if we all just... tried being a little kinder?

To ourselves when the project doesn't go as planned.

To the colleague who's figuring it out as they go.

To the competitor who landed the client we wanted.

To the version of ourselves that's still learning, still growing, still occasionally getting it wrong.

What if decency wasn't a weakness, but a strategy? What if being good to yourself and others wasn't soft, but smart?

I don't have all the answers. I'm still learning this myself. But I know this much: the creative work I'm proudest of didn't come from a place of self-criticism or competition. It came from a place of confidence, collaboration, and enough self-compassion to take the risks that mattered.

And that's the kind of work—and the kind of professional—I want to be.

What about you? When's the last time you gave yourself (or a colleague) the benefit of the doubt? I'd love to hear your thoughts.