Maybe...try to accept it this way: that no one is the best forever. Even people at the top of their field are going to be surpassed eventually.

I just accept that I'll do my personal best, regardless of what anyone else is doing. It's normal to compare yourself to others, but I try to remember that my personal style is what makes my effort unique, even if I'm doing something someone else has done before.

Not being the best doesn't necessarily means being mediocre or bad.

One can still be awesome while not being the best.

aim to be better than the past you, that's the path to growth.

How? Uh... common sense? No one is the absolute best, and if you get the impression that someone is, it's just media hype, an oversimplification, or being trapped in some opinion bubble. Applies to any occupation.

There will always be someone better than you, even if you are #1, you won't be on that "place" forever, so i just accept that i'm the best I can be for now and my only enemy is best version of myself ( i know this is cringy but oh well) so i strive to be the best i can be.

I’m not sure there’s any way to really “get rid of” these feelings. It’s just as you said, you have to learn to accept them.

Someone will always be better than you. Someone will always be worse than you. And you will never improve if you don’t continue to try and grow. That’s just the way of things.

I used to spend a lot of time comparing myself to other artists/writers, and it really chewed my confidence—so much so that I’ve spent years not doing something I loved. I don’t know about you, but I reached a point where I decided that the only person I need to be in competition with is myself. When I start a new project (or even a new chapter), I think, “I want this to be a little better than what I did last time”, and you know what? It really helps.

The moment you stop comparing yourself to others, or what is “popular” (which often has someone’s money behind it), is the moment you really have time to grow. Don’t worry about what others are doing, or how they rate compared to you on some magical scale. Be happy for their success as you search for your own. “The best” is subjective anyway; it all depends on someone’s opinion, and we all have opinions. If you let your fear of not being recognized by everyone hold you back, you’ll never find the people who will appreciate and need your work.

In the end, it’s about what we give back, not how we’re recognized. At least that’s what I think. Someone will love you, and someone won’t. I choose to keep creating for myself, and for those people who like my work.

Best of luck to you!

no matter how good you are at something, there will always be someone better than you!

Fact of life

You know, it's easy to come in with big hopes and high aspirations. However, I've always come in with the mindset that I am human, and not only am I bound to make mistakes, but people aren't going to like those mistakes. People aren't always going to like my work, period.

As long as I like my work, that's all I can ask for.

Two things helped me move past this.

1) Hearing professionals who've been at it for 1, 2, even up to 5 decades, also feel the same way. We often only see "their best", or what others have decided is their best. Their personal favorites often don't align with what we consider their masterpieces. They don't churn out phenomenal work every single time they sit down and draw, either. Those masterpieces are actually, believe it or not, still few and far between. They still do a lot of warm-ups, they still have trouble translating what's in their head, they are never good at everything to do with art.

There are some skills where I think it's possible to achieve true mastery, but art is not one of them. It's a bottomless pit, and we don't have enough time in the world to see where it ends--if it even does--no matter who we are.

2) If I draw something and it's not good enough, I can just draw it again. I can learn more, grow my skill, and try again in a couple days, or weeks, or months, or years. Even if I make a comic, why should I care if it's not perfect from the get go? I can reboot it later. You don't only get 1 shot at it. You get as many as you want to give yourself. I, for one, love to see reboots from creators and see how they've either changed or grown! Often, the story undergoes changes too. It's definitely a huge time-investment to reboot a series, but if you want to do it, do it. ^^

To be your best?
To able to put what is in your head into imagery as accurately as you can. As close as you can to how you envisioned it.

Comparing to others works is normal but I bet if you talk to those who you think are better than yourself you will find that they will have the same insecurities.
Important to not let it get you down and be inspired to improve.

That depends. I've been saying to myself I'm the best, and I'm the worst at the same time.

The thing is, you can't be the best if you have millions of other creators aiming for the same spot. Even if you're the number 1, that fame can drop faster than you can turn right.
If you create only for being popular and being the next big thing, you only look at the side of the positive things too. Most creators forget that if you're famous, every controversial thing you've said or done will be held accountable to you. And besides that, stop comparing yourself to others. It just poisons your mind with those thoughts. Yes, everyone is indeed inspired by others in one way or another. But they'll try to do it in their own way one way or another. Like, if I told 100 cooks they should make one soup for me, I would still get 100 different results.

I don't know for how long you will be stuck in this mindset, but I will just say this:

Just be yourself. I want to see the Aqua who is himself and not an Aqua who pretends to be someone else. Enjoy the ride for what it is and have fun. Time is a cruel mistress. Everyone will be forgotten sooner or later in time, no matter how famous they were.

Heads up, gonna relate this to my journey with writing music.

Earlier on while working with music and stuff, I often felt the same way about my own projects. Nothing ever felt like it would live up to what I considered the greats, even if I felt like it was my personal best. A big part of that acceptance came in the way of knowing I have a vision, but that vision's not being met with the appropriate skill set and equipment I had at the moment.

And again, nothing I did lived up to what the people I looked up to were putting out into the world. Somewhere along the way I realized I was basically competing with people who had far more experience and resources, and they weren't even making music to be better than others in the first place! And for what? Let's be real, even if I did somehow manage to make something better than them, I doubt I'd even know what to do with myself after that.

That perspective had to go. I just had to focus on whether or not I liked making music, and the answer was yes. The new goal became to just make something I could be proud of with the few skills I have. That's it. Everything else comes after. Audience, income, production quality- that's for later. I just gotta like what I make.

Looking back, I feel like that was the most mature decision I could've made. It's so easy to be in that situation and just give up bc your finished products don't match what you were initially envisioning. Not just that, but to unintentionally put yourself at a massive disadvantage by not knowing what goes into your idols' work and competing with them. That mindset has sorta stuck with me.

TL;DR

Just focus on being happy with what you can make. Easier said than than done, I know. But I've also kinda seen it in this other way, though it sounds a bit grim. The last thing you'd want from this entire experience is to only be able to remember that you were never good enough.

You'l think I am mad, but you know what. Don't accept it
Make yourself the best. Work hard for it. You may never become the best of the best, but why not try at least.
First try to become the best version of yourself. Then try to surpass those that are better than you.

It's like INCREDIBLY DAMN HARD to get over "I am not the best". You either take it in the face every day or you take it AND try to overcome your limits.

I am not the best. There are always going to be people better than I am but the thing is, there is people better than they are. They are not me. The did not have the same experiences I did, they grew up differently, have different friends, family, read different books, live in a different place. They are not me, and I am not them. It is unfair to yourself to compare yourself to other people.
The only one I want to compare myself to, is myself.
No one can be the "best" for anything more than a moment. That moment is fleeting, and ultimately meaningless. What does matter though, is your effort. your own growth. Every creature on this planet is in a state of growth and change. I am a strong believer in effort, hard work and growth. Even if you can never be the "best" you can be better than you were yesterday.
I used to care, I used to compare my artwork to other people. I used to have it compared by other people. I felt inadequate as people half my age were winning awards for the field I wanted so desperately to be part of. Then one day I woke up and I realized all this. That those people have growing to do too. And I just stopped caring about their path. I focused on what made me happy. On my effort, my growth, my path. Not for anyone but myself. I know I have flaws. I know that i am not perfect. I know I still have lots of growing to do, but I also am proud of how far I've already come.

How do I accept I'm not the best? Pff, who says I'm not!?

Joking aside, the more time I spend in the industry, the more I discover that everything professional creators can do can be learned and/or copied. I can crack open "Drawn to Life" by Walt Stanchfield and read it and try to copy the techniques and learn to draw like a Disney artist. I can watch The Incredibles with the director commentary and learn how Brad Bird directs his scenes and viewer attention and tone so perfectly. I can read "Save the Cat!" and learn how to structure a story like a professional screenwriter. These abilities aren't magical gifts granted by spiritual beings, they're just skills people can learn. "angle your characters at a diagonal so they look more dynamic", "Write your story first, then go back and edit to make it all feel like it fits together".

A lot of the time, the thing that separates people who hit it big early in their career and people who take longer or who give up is really just privilege and luck. People are generally not born with incredible writing or drawing talent. They usually have some sort of mentor who taught them that, OR they copied it from somebody else who learned it. They usually also had some kind of support, like a mentor or advisor, a great editor or an amazing team.

Like, let's look at Star Wars for a minute. People always frame it like Star Wars just jumped from the mind of Lucas, super-genius man, wow! How can a person just make Star Wars!? ....Well... by learning, copying and.... having a great team. It makes sense, right? If he was a super genius man, how could the same guy who made the perfect movie that is the original Star Wars (A New Hope) also make... The Phantom Menace, which even though I personally can enjoy it, it's not....good.
An awful lot of the structure of Star Wars is heavily influenced by or straight up copied from Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. The choice to set it from the droids' point of view (like the two bickering peasants from Hidden Fortress), the decision to make it start in media res, the decision to have tense sword fights... It was this mixed with a basic "Hero's Journey" narrative structure (which Lucas learned from a book) and the aesthetic of pulp 1950s sci fi as imagined by a great team of concept artists and prop and set makers. The space battles are copied from WW2 dogfight movies, to the point that originally they used clips from these to stand in for these scenes during production. Then of course, the whole movie when it was first made was SO BAD that Spielberg said it was awful (in much cruder language) and it was only made into something narratively coherent and watchable by Lucas' then wife editing it to within an inch of its life, and let's not forget Carrie Fisher's always underappreciated work as a script doctor making the dialogue better! (Rest in Peace, absolute heroine).

What I'm saying is, most of the time, genius isn't an island. Anyone can learn to be a great creator if they put in the effort and go through a learning process, or if they have an amazing team behind them.

Whenever I'm feeling down, I like to watch Hbomberguy's video about how RWBY fails to live up to its premise1. RWBY was massively popular, but it's completely inept! It fails on so many of the rules of basic writing. Most of what's good about it either comes from Monty Oum (rest in peace) or is cribbed from other series (mostly Cowboy Beebop, Avatar and Korra). I watch that video and I think ".....I could do better than that!" I think that anyone who has put some effort into reading books and watching videos about narrative structure could write a better version of RWBY. Do I think I could write a better version of Avatar the Last Airbender? Hmm... maybe not? Or not yet? (I could probably write better than that episode where they're all in the canyon though. That one is mehhh) But I think I could write a better RWBY and that's a start, right?
The longer you keep studying and making things, the more things you'll see and think "okay, I think I know how this could be improved", and the more high quality those things will be. You have to start somewhere though. You have to take that step and make those mistakes that you'll learn from. So go and make them! Get your mistakes out the way now so that if you do get the opportunity of an audience and budget, you'll be a stronger creator who has learned from mistakes when that happens!

I feel like in the comic/writing world, you don't really need to be the best or "top of the class". I feel like there's a threshold that you need to meet where people are not too distracted by the quality of art/writing and are just there for the story. I feel like my recommendation is to just read a large variety of work. If you are only hyper focusing on the stuff made by a veteran or a team of 10 people, of course it is going to look intimidating. But sometime finding other people who are at your same level who were able to be successful may give you some insight into a what goal you need to reach.

Two things: to be the best, you have to actually make things that aren't the best. Ever read the first book/creative project by someone who's considered to be "the best"? It's usually not amazing. They got to be the best because they allowed themselves to NOT be the best, and in doing so, failed. And learned from their failures. Being "the best" is built upon multiple failures. If you never fail, you will never be the best.

Second of all, popularity has nothing to do with quality, lol. In fact I'm convinced that you HAVE to be at least some flavor of mediocre to be a sensation, because... I feel like flaws, ironically, make people connect with and take ownership of a work more so than something that's a masterpiece. Like... take Harry Potter. I'm not gonna say it's bad or anything, but is it seriously the best? Absolutely not. Rowling did an absolutely terrible job at exploring the world she built and wasted a ton of potential... but the fans took that wasted potential and ran with it, and made that world their own.