There’s this archetype of person coined by Vox Day called a gamma male.
A gamma male is a person that’s their own secret king.
Despite having some capabilities to succeed, (intelligence/talent) they squander those capabilities by being
1. unwilling to be humble and learn from others
2. Unwilling to be team member under a leader until they grow&develop enough to become a leader themselves
3. Unwilling work alongside others who are more skilled than them
4. Freak out and act erratically if they are a leader to a friend then the friend becomes as/more successful than them.
What I’m going to be discussing here is some of my thoughts about this topic.
While developing yourself artistically over the course of months and years you naturally spend a lot of time alone. During all this alone time I think it can be easy to lie to yourself and inflate your own ego by telling yourself your work is great and that you’re surely going to make it but you just haven’t been noticed yet.
Let me outline a scenario, you release audio-visual content online but never show anyone you know. You aren’t getting any engagement, positive or negative. Despite nobody in your personal life as well as nobody online giving you feedback you still develop an inflated ego and think you’re a prodigy in whatever field.
You are unable to do the four bullet points mentioned above due to ego.
Is the solution to not becoming a secret king to constantly blast every social media outlet and friend’s inbox with your content?
I don’t believe so, I think the key is balance.
Personally, I just put out a new song yesterday.
I put the song on my personal Snapchat story as well as my Instagram story so most people in my life should have seen it.
I didn’t privately message anyone with a link because it was already on two stories so I felt sending out a message would be overkill.
If I hadn’t put it on both those stories I would’ve felt like I was being a secret king & sort of hiding it from people I know.
I like the song, but part of me is still nervous about doing music and what people think about both me for making music and the music itself so it would’ve been easier to just not publicly say anything on my social media about it.
However, I know by not posting about it at least once I would be acting like a secret king.
Basically, it’s healthy to put your content in front of people to attempt to get feedback, (good or bad) but not to overshare it.
That being said, if anyone checks out my content and thinks it’s trash please let me know.
Being prideful & arrogant even if you’re wildly successful is bad and it’s even worse if you have no numbers to back that up.
That being said, you should work to develop confidence and being comfortable in your skills.
The balance between confidence and arrogance is delicate and maintaining that balance is an ongoing process.
I’ve definitely fallen for the trap of being arrogant/overconfident before.
A time when this was especially true was when I first moved to a bigger market from my hometown. I think I had an inflated sense of how good my skills to create art were.
Just like every high, there came an inevitable low where I realized I wasn’t where I needed to be and became extremely unconfident & insecure in myself for a period of time.
However, I didn’t just lay down and feel sorry for myself. I looked at where I wanted to be at, readjusted my mentality, and started figuring out how I could develop myself overtime to get to the level I wanted/want to be at.
Will I get there? Am I there? Am I close to being, “there”? Maybe
Will I take care to evaluate my own skills honestly and not become a secret king? Yes.