Sadly, being a perfectionist who sets high expectations for myself and strives persistently to achieve them, I cannot be satisfied with good effort unless it results in good work. I struggle to accept and embrace sucking, my own less-than-stellar performance. An old mentor once told me that the antidote to perfectionism is acceptance, of our strengths as well as our flaws. Giving ourselves permission to live a healthy and happy life while occasionally stumbling, falling, messing up, or not doing and giving it our very best, just our good enough. It’s all temporary anyway – our successes and failures. When things go well, be sure to enjoy it fully. And during those times when it's not all smooth sailing, remember that the wheel of life is always turning, and this, too, shall pass. We need a good mix of successes, partial successes, and failures, a wide variety of experiences, and to face them all with a cheerful heart.
Now, clearly, sucking at something is not fun, but the point is to remind ourselves to be okay with sucking for the moment. Instead of berating yourself for falling short, take a humorous approach and tip your hat to your flaws saying “You are welcome here, too. And we’ll work this out.” The same old mentor challenged me to always keep trying new activities, the point being that I’d suck at the vast majority of them, at least in the beginning. And so, every so often, I will try and pick up a new hobby. I’ve lost count of all the many different pursuits, but can honestly say that some were a huge success being well-suited for my natural ability (adult coloring books, hiking and kayaking), some were an epic fail (kickboxing - hated the smell, and Dragon boat racing - pulled my back rowing on just one side), and some were enjoyable despite the fact that I kind of suck at it, for example, knitting. I never progressed beyond easy patterns for scarves and blankets. But I love knitting. It’s like therapy for me. I even started a knitting club, being the club’s least talented member. But you know what? I am perfectly happy being a beginner knitter for life.
You might counter and ask: “but why would anyone do something they are not good at?” Well, why not? By definition, free time should be a time when we are free to do things for which we have great passion or that give us great pleasure even if we don’t necessarily have the talent or skills. Time out from duties, responsibilities, and toils should be all about fun as a way to reenergize and refresh the mind and body. There’s a lot to be said for just being in the moment, creating a safe zone where no comparing or competition are allowed, where pure presence and joy are the end-goal.
This brings me to this week’s new challenge – getting back in the pool. It seemed like a truly great idea to fill two needs with one deed, give my legs a break and embrace the sucking. Except that swimming is my worst nightmare. It’s boring, the chlorine kills my skin and wreaks havoc on my curls, and I just cannot get the hang of breathing in the water. To add insult to injury, my goggles always fill with water making my eyes sting. I am definitely meant for solid ground, not water. Despite all of the above, I was determined to give swimming (another) try. I should also specify that I am the product of my father’s Sink or Swim survival swimming teaching method, tossing us kids into the water to make us swim, which in all fairness, was the chosen practice at the time. Most of my friends also took swimming lessons later on. Swimming lessons were a compulsory element in the school 4th grade curriculum when I was growing up in Israel. It was certainly a defining experience of my youth being a pale fat girl sticking out like a sore thumb among the fit, toned, and tanned bodies of my classmates, the sabras. I managed to get out of swim lessons due to chronic ear infections, and so I never properly learned how to swim.
But I showed up committing myself to swimming two times a week, 30 minutes per workout. I wasn’t expecting to be able to cover 20-30 laps like I used to after I took some swimming lessons a couple of years ago, but I was not prepared to only be able to do just 2 lengths of the pool before needing to take a break. By the end of the 30-minutes involving some swimming and a lot of resting, I was completely and utterly exhausted to the delight of my elderly lane-mate who tried to lecture me about the importance of being in good shape. It certainly didn’t help that I made the rookie mistake of forgetting to remove the logo stickers from my brand new googles, looking like a complete and utter idiot, so silly. But instead of protesting too much about my fitness level, I decided to embrace the sucking and allow my uniqueness to scream out loud, “yes, I suck!”
Is this at all applicable to building a career? Some people approach their careers the same way our parents wanted us to approach school: be good at everything. Most people don’t give themselves permission to suck. They stress over their imperfections and are in too big of a rush to speed up the learning process, to make a quick splash. We are humans. Nobody is perfect. Find a way to be okay with sucking for a short time. You’ll suck at most things in the beginning. It takes time, persistence, and patience to deliver your best work. But in our careers, once we spend the necessary time to learn a skill and gain experience, there comes a point when in order to grow, we need to drop, or delegate the things that we suck at to focus on the things we excel at to leverage our strengths for peak performance. Be honest with yourself and understand your limitations in order to learn, grow, and improve. Acknowledge the areas where you have room to grow, but spend most of your energy, time, and attention on using your strengths to get ahead in your career.
But always keep challenging yourself to try out new things. You might suck in the beginning. And that’s okay. Never miss an opportunity to show up and do the best that you can. Have the best attitude, be the best at practicing. It might turn into a great opportunity or something to leave by the wayside moving on to the next new thing.
When was the last time you tried something new?
