When someone is described as high-quality or top tier, what’s being praised—their ownership of resources, or their skill at using people and systems to maximize control? What if admiration for authority is a distraction, rooted not in respect, but in a legacy that measures your worth against someone else’s?
Hierarchy Is Not Value
Culture teaches us to identify “authorities” and judge ourselves in comparison, an old script that keeps our focus outward and our own intelligence muted. This isn’t about respect. It’s about a system built on constant comparison, making you question and dissect your own value until you’re always looking up, always doubting your own voice.
The Power Economy: Who Gets to Be Resourceful?
Consider who gains when power means control—when being “high-level” signals how effectively someone uses other people as assets, not how they nurture ideas, build structures, or connect authentically. Leaders are too often measured by what or whom they own or direct, overlooking those who drive strategy by elevating others and creating lasting frameworks for the field as a whole.
A Shift for Artists, Founders, and Creatives
You aren’t a fragment, nor anyone’s missing piece. You have your own structure, network, and foundations. So why trade your capacity for creative direction just to fit inside someone else’s definition of “quality”? What do you gain by labeling yourself a resource instead of stepping forward as a strategist and builder in your own practice?
Claiming Agency in Creative Strategy
If your sense of self requires affirmation from above in a pecking order built by others, it’s time to question what in your work or thinking remains unclaimed. What compels you to trade your creative authority for a borrowed sense of worth? Your value is built through your choices, your vision. Refuse to be minimized to a mere asset in someone else’s plan.
Ready to claim your role as a builder, not just a resource? Explore more strategic insight and creative practice at MCJ Studio.
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