Allow Yourself to Fail at the Beginner Skills

I used to think that I was a terrible writer. I lived with that narrative for 20+ years until I finally snapped out of it.

I used to quit anything that I felt that I was terrible at. Growing up, this would entail gymnastics, soccer, basketball, volleyball, cross-country, tennis … clearly sports were not for me.

But I also would apply this to academic subjects. I would lose confidence if I received a terrible grade. Throughout school, I was consistently told that I was terrible at writing by teachers and by standardized testing results. I repeated that narrative as a crutch for not improving on that skill.

It’s intimidating to try something new when the fear of failure looms. The fear grows as things get more challenging. As I have been navigating my career and hobbies, curbing this fear has been a frustrating ongoing battle.

All it took was some praise along with feedback.

In grad school, I got a burst of confidence from one teacher who actually liked my writing, and was very eloquent on what improvements I needed to make. I don’t know what happened, but that gave me the confidence to keep going. I continued to get great feedback on my writing from that moment and had so much confidence in my thesis a year later.

I’ve dealt with other harsh criticism than my terrible writing. Early in my career as a marketing assistant, I was…