It’s Okay To Not Be Good

It’s easy to look at someone else and think “Man, they’re good. They always do the right thing. They always make the right decision.”

It’s easy to think everyone else is good while you’re not.

We get this way in our hobbies. We don’t want to pick up a pencil to try our hand at sketching. The fear becomes your first time trying won’t be good.

Maybe you’re scared to write a song. You think it won’t be good. It probably won’t.

You may not want to put pen to paper or keyboard to screen and write something because you think no one will like it.

We’re all fearful of starting something new. We know we may struggle to get good at what we want.

So we stop doing it. We don’t pick up the pen. We put down the pencil after the first horrendous sketch. Or we feel the pressure to stop leading because we made a bad choice or two.

We quit, too often, because we’re not good.

It’s Okay To Not Be Good

But what would have happened if we didn’t quit at the first sign of mediocrity or downright badness? What would happen if, instead, we continued to work on our skills?

You know what would happen. The same thing that happens to a baby as he begins to walk.

You would stumble a bit. The artwork would look ugly. You wouldn’t run a full marathon. The photos you take are out of focus.

No one who does great work starts out good. They start out struggling to produce something of value. They think their work isn’t worth the effort.

Today, it’s okay to not be good. It’s okay to put out work that isn’t your best (or maybe it is your best but your better best is yet to come?).

Don’t let your fear of not being good at what you want to try stop you from trying. You can work on the messy parts, the parts you’re not good at. Keep going back to the pen, the keyboard, the starting line.

Each time you do, you get incrementally better. Your poor becomes acceptable. Your acceptable becomes pretty darn nice. Eventually, you discover you are good.

Becoming good is a process. It takes you being unwilling to quit. It take you being unwilling to walk away when you feel you’re not doing good work.

Be willing to be bad until you can be good.

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