Being good isn't a prerequisite
There’s nothing wrong with being a face in the crowd, as long as there’s no risk of Covid. (Image by Eak K.)
When my nephew was about three, he interrupted dinner to make a pronouncement.
“All of da gwonups!” he said, emphatically addressing his grandparents, parents, and me. “We have a ploblem!”
The “ploblem” turned out to be that he wanted someone to play cars with, and he didn’t have too much trouble solving it.
More than a decade later, I still smile when I think of my nephew’s plucky way of getting attention, creating urgency, and asking for what he wanted. There’s a lot to learn from it. It’s important to have the confidence to go for what we want.
Unfortunately, some of us give up on that. We assume that what we want is stupid or that we can’t have it anyway. We don’t think there are people who can help us, or we’re scared to ask them. We might even come to believe that there isn’t a solution to our ploblem.
And then we might get cranky and browse social media and seethe in frustration at the people peddling mediocre things. “Why does this person have all this attention when what she’s doing isn’t that good?”
Well, that’s an easy one. It’s because she has the nerve to go out and promote herself. It doesn’t matter that you or I don’t think it’s good. It’s irrelevant.
You don’t have to like it. (Photo courtesy L.R.)
My elementary-age nieces have been making truly bizarre LEGO animation videos featuring lots of body horror and absurdist humor. Is it good? It doesn’t matter. They proudly share their weird work without really caring whether anyone likes it or not. Day by day, I can see them getting better at filmmaking and storytelling. But being “good” isn’t a prerequisite for anything. They get to do whatever they want.
So do the gwonups. But instead of moving forward, doing a thing badly while we’re learning, we might wait for permission or a certain threshold of quality. It’s understandable, but unnecessary. Too often, it slows us down so much that we never actually do the thing we wanted to do. At worst, we just bitterly watch and judge everyone else who dares to step forward.
The way to correct both of these unhealthy tendencies at the same time is to simply take action, even when it is uncomfortable or uncertain. When we do, not only will we be moving toward what we want, we’ll also find ourselves with a lot more compassion and generosity for the others who are out there trying stuff, too, however lackluster the results.
With consistent effort over time, pushing through the voices in our heads that are calling for us to slow down or step back or quit, we will iterate. We will improve. Before long, we’ll find people who like what we’re doing. We might even fool them into thinking we’re pretty good. We might even be good. But who really gets to be the judge of that, anyway? If we’re having enough fun, we won’t care.
Special announcement!
I’m thrilled to be featured on today’s episode of the TMBA Podcast. Check it out!
