4 Empowering Ways To Respond When Others Take Credit For Your Work
Updated: Aug 20, 2024
Written by Danielle Raine, Holistic Creativity Coach
Danielle Raine is a holistic creativity expert and mindset coach for creatives and entrepreneurs. She has been studying the creative process since an epiphany at Art School in 1993 that revealed how to access the flow state.
They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but this may do little to reduce the sting when someone takes the credit for your hard work. So, here are 4 positive ways you can not only deal with it calmly and with grace, but also turn it to your advantage and use it to fuel your success.
The greats of the world are familiar with the experience of being imitated and copied. Many superstars and legends have all had to learn how to handle the inevitable copycats,
idea-stealers and downright plagiarism that comes with being highly visible and at the top of their game.
So, if this has happened to you, take heart that you're in good company. You may even like to congratulate yourself for being so visible and impressive that others are taking note.
Because, if you're up to anything exciting in the world, there's a good chance that your work will be noticed by others. And the more it gets noticed, the higher the chances that people will see its value, and become so inspired or impressed that they want to claim it as their own.
While this may indeed be a form of flattery – an acknowledgement that our work or ideas have merit – it can be a painful experience, triggering feelings of injustice, frustration, helplessness and fury.
If this has happened to you, I hope the following techniques and suggestions may help you find your way back to more balanced emotions, and even uncover the potential gifts in the situation.
“No mud, no lotus.” –Thich Nhat Hanh
4 empowering ways to respond when others take credit for your work
1. Tap back into neutral
A good way to respond to any triggering emotion is to turn to your favourite tools or techniques for managing your nervous system. My favourite is EFT, also known as tapping. Doing this first helps to neutralise any tendencies to spiral downward in an unhelpful mental rant.
It can also take the sting out of the offence, so you feel less hurt by it, which gives you a calmer place to respond from. Knee-jerk reactions and heated responses are rarely the best solution in this kind of situation. So if you have any techniques for calming your fire or delaying the fight response, it's a good idea to turn to those first.
Once you have taken the heat out of the situation, you'll be able to think about what to do with more calm and equanimity. This doesn't justify any wrong-doing, or deny your emotions, it simply helps you process your feelings in a healthy way, so you can make more clear-headed decisions.
“Anyone with a body, a mind, and a nervous system needs productive skills to cope with the pressures of the world.” – Guru Jagat
2. Embrace empathy
This can be a tricky one when you feel like the wronged party, but as an incentive, it’s usually a fast-track to more peace – for you.
If you can, just for a moment, put yourself in their shoes. What were they trying to achieve? Were they operating out of desperation and therefore not being their best selves? Was it a spontaneous act, one they may be regretting? (Haven't we all had those?) Or perhaps they were genuinely oblivious to the fact that it was your idea. Maybe they absorbed it subconsciously and truly believe it to have come from their own mind.
Considering possible reasons why the other person may have done what they did can help you to feel more compassion and less contempt, frustration and injustice (which are never pleasant emotions). This response will also strengthen your emotional intelligence, which is an important marker for true success and achievement in life. If you can find it in your heart to see the situation from their point of view, you’ll be rewarded with a degree of personal growth that will serve you for life.
“Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control.” – James Allen
3. Practice forgiveness
If you explore an empathetic approach and still feel that the other person has wronged you, there's the potential for another opportunity to use the situation to your advantage. This is the realm of forgiveness, and it may be notoriously difficult for us mortals, but as the saying goes, it can be divine. Because there are real and lasting benefits to practicing forgiveness – and they are benefits that you get to enjoy.
Although it's not always easy, practicing the art of forgiveness is a spiritual practice that can improve your health and help you align more with the flow of life's blessings. It may feel as though you shouldn't have to be the one making the effort to dig deep and forgive, and in a perfect world, perhaps you shouldn't. But in the interests of your peace of mind, your inner calm, your health and wellbeing, it's a practice worth considering.
Depending on the intensity of the offence or your feelings around it, it may help to seek support with this practice. One powerful technique is the Sedona Method, which has helped thousands of people around the world embrace forgiveness and enjoy more peace.
“Forgiveness is a lever to our divinity.” – Danielle LaPorte
4. Ask: Have I ever…?
Can you guess what inspired me to write this post? It was prompted by a personal example of this challenging experience. I discovered someone had written a piece of content that was a very close replica of one of my most successful blog posts. Although it had been tweaked a little, the outline and structure had been copied almost exactly, along with many of the phrases. It was clearly 'inspired by' my work, and at first, I'll admit, it did feel irritating.
But then, as I went through the steps above, I began to wonder... Have I ever found something valuable, either in a book, online or in another coach's programme, and been influenced by it?
While my writing career has trained me to be hypervigilant about plagiarism, I consume a huge amount of content, and I have a relentless hunger for new ideas. So, it’s likely that over the course of a 30-year career, I’ll have incorporated the ideas of others into my work. While I always give credit for direct citations, could I say for sure that I've never relayed the ideas of others without sharing my source? Even with the best intentions, it’s not always possible to remember or find out where the original idea came from. And if I may have been an inadvertent Creative Magpie in the past, can I really be outraged when someone else does the same thing?
It can be humbling to admit that we’re also not perfect humans, with flaws and failings that we'd rather not dwell on. But a brief acknowledgement that we're all human, all doing the best we know how, can help us to feel less like a victim. It can also mitigate the severity of the other person's actions. After all, if good and kind people like us are capable of similar offences, is it really so terrible?
“We are in this together.” – Beth Kempton
The gifts – for you
These techniques may not be easy, at least at first, but with practice they’ll help you to give the other person the benefit of the doubt, (which they may or may not deserve). As an incentive, it can help to remember that the real benefits and blessings will be for you.
As well as helping you support your nervous system in the face of life's challenges, cultivating more empowering and positive responses will help you to grow as a person, to mature as an emotional being, and to hone an elevated self-image. These benefits can have lasting effects on your health and happiness, as well as your success in life.
Considering these potential responses can help you transform an upsetting or infuriating injustice and turn it to your advantage. It may also bring some relief to trust that everything happens for a reason, or at least, that there’s always some kind of gift in these types of blessings in disguise. This can help you to reframe the entire drama in a more positive light – one that will bring you peace, wellbeing, and calm, along with a resilience that will serve you for life.
As an additional bonus, the next time it happens – which it probably will, as you continue to rise and succeed – you'll be better placed to respond with calm and grace, brushing off the inevitable copycats as you join the ranks of the greats.
Danielle
For more soul-soothing tips for navigating the path to success, help yourself to my Free Guide for Creatives: Remedies for Emotional Calm
Danielle Raine, Holistic Creativity Coach
Danielle Raine is a holistic creativity expert and mindset coach for creatives and entrepreneurs.
She has been studying the creative process since an epiphany at Art School in 1993 that revealed how to access the flow state.
For three decades, she's been working and experimenting in the creative fields of design, blogging, publishing, marketing, tech, and entrepreneurship, with a particular focus on the nature of inspiration and flow productivity.
Her specialty is a wellness-based, feel-good approach to creative fulfilment and success, along with an enduring theme of enjoying the journey as much as possible.
Through her coaching, courses, books, and blogs, her mission is to share the simple, practical tools that create rapid shifts and inspiring results, so that her clients, students, and readers can do more of the work they love to do, and bring their most exciting creative visions to life.
