Subject: Being bad at something Last time, I wrote about identity—and about the need to keep rediscovering yourself. If you haven’t read it yet, that piece lives in the archive here: [[26-1-19]] One way to think about identity is as a model you carry around of who you are: what you like, what you avoid, what feels “for you” and what doesn’t. Keeping that model accurate takes work, because you change and the world changes with you. And sometimes, keeping your model up to date requires doing something new. The inconvenient part is that doing something new almost always means being bad at something. We’d prefer growth without incompetence, novelty without awkwardness, change without friction—but in practice, the two are inseparable. Being bad at something isn’t catastrophic. It’s just uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough that most of us quietly avoid it unless we’re being very intentional. That’s where a little inspiration helps. I’ve written before about lessons we can learn from children: [[What adults can learn from children]]. One of the most comforting (and funniest) is this: children are bad at most things—and, most of the time, it doesn’t bother them. Of course, sometimes it _does_ bother them. They get frustrated. They get embarrassed. They get discouraged. And when that happens, we step in. What do we say to a discouraged child? We tell them to keep their chin up. To keep trying. To believe in themselves. We tell them they’re learning. We tell them they’re getting better—even if they can’t see it yet. We tell them these things because failure has a strange gravity to it. When something goes poorly, the most immediately comforting response is often to give up—to retreat to what’s familiar. To say “this isn’t for me,” or “I’m just not good at this,” or “I don’t belong here.” Children say these things to themselves. And so do we. What’s funny is that we’re often perfectly willing to say these things internally—but the idea of saying them out loud to someone else feels almost cruel. We know, intuitively, how damaging they are. We would never tell a discouraged child, “Yeah, you’re right, you should probably stop,” or “Maybe this just isn’t who you are.” Yet we say exactly that to ourselves. So here’s the invitation: when you are trying something new and feeling the discomfort of being bad at it, treat yourself the way you would treat a child you care about. Encourage yourself. Be patient with yourself. Remind yourself that learning feels like this. Choose acceptance over self-rejection. Choose love over retreat. Love, in this sense, isn’t a feeling—it’s an action. It’s the decision to endure present discomfort in service of future joy. I’ve written more about that definition here: [[Love]]. Growth asks for that kind of love.