The despair of not being good
I recently learned a new skill. And I wasn’t good at it. (The skill, if you must know, was writing with a certain tone for a corporate blog. But the lessons below apply for any skill.)
I don’t like being “not good”, aka bad, at something. Especially since it was adjacent to an activity I’ve been doing for years, which is blogging.
I would get feedback on how to improve this or that. I understood the feedback, it made sense, but the overall feeling I had was of failure. I felt shame because this was something I thought I knew. That honestly pissed me off. But after the shame passed, I acknowledged that the comments were correct, that I wasn’t producing what I should.
It’s important to acknowledge that it’s OK to fail (I’ve covered that before) and that it’s OK to be bummed about it. We’re all human and the emotions are part of it.
I had a couple of choices. I could keep trying and make improvements over time. Or I could decide that, hey, maybe this wasn’t the right task for me to do.
