Video by emmanuel_thefab

Your past successes can be your greatest obstacle. You create a photograph that everyone loves. We're talking 300,000 lives, 24,000 reshare. Naturally, your first instinct is to recreate it, to protect it, to stay with what works. That's where many photographers stop growing. If you're constantly trying to recreate yesterday's work, you would never be able to create tomorrow's masterpiece.

Growth demands that you let go of the comfort that your past achievements provide. It asks you to experiment. Every new level of growth begins when your old formula stops working. There's a saying that you can't put a new wine in an old wine skin. It bursts. Of course, be proud of your past work.

Study it. Learn from it. But you must have the courage to outgrow it. Because your greatest competition is not another photographer. It's the version of you that is still trying to relieve yesterday's victory. The best photographers don't spend their career chasing the image that made them famous. They spend their lives creating photographs that make their last work look ordinary.

That's how you make sure your greatest work is always ahead of you and not behind you. You're welcome.