Explore the Benefits of Shamelessly Failing
If there’s one thing the American education system has done a phenomenal job of teaching, it’s how to always strive to be the best. We’re supposed to be ranked #1 in our school, be on the varsity sports team and spend four years of our lives preparing for acceptance to the most prestigious universities. Inherently, this isn’t a bad thing at all! Learning hard work is invaluable, and achieving important goals and being rewarded for them sets us up for all kinds of future success. However, I’d argue something much more controversial: it’s just as valuable to be bad at things.
The notion that there’s value in not being good at something is completely counterintuitive to the way our brains are trained, and I’ve personally gone through this learning curve. For a long time, I was good at almost everything I did, and worked hard to make sure of it. While this trait has earned me stellar transcripts, a few awards and praise from my parents, it came with a price. I had a serious fear of trying new things if I felt I wouldn’t be good at them, or if I did try and didn’t find quick success, it was hard for me to stick to it. This mindset led me to only find value in things if I was good at them, which I now see hindered me far more than failure ever could have.
Thankfully, I began changing this mindset about two years ago when I joined my high school golf team. I was completely out of my comfort zone because I had no prior experience with golf, while the majority of girls on the team had been playing for years. While it would be an incredible story to say I soared the ranks of my golf team with immediate natural skill that earned me the lowest scores and most awards, it would not be the least bit true. I struggled with golf over and over again, and while I made steady progress, I never excelled, even after playing for two years. This was something wildly uncomfortable for me — uncomfortable to have coaches and other players watch me swing and miss, drive a ball straight into the ground, or chip it about 10 feet past the green, and do so over and over again.
But I found that despite all of this failure (or mediocrity at best), I really loved golf. In fact, when I look back at my time on the team, the moments I’m most fond of are the ones I spent laughing with my coaches and teammates about my questionable skills. It was liberating to play just to play, not to get the best score.
It’s difficult to be truly comfortable with not being good at something. But once you find a way to do what you love without caring how you look to others, it becomes infinitely easier to try new things, meet new people and really push yourself past your comfort zone. I truly believe this mindset is just as important as hard work; and not to mention, I’ve found that accomplishments just aren’t as rewarding if you make yourself miserable in the process. For our own sanity, it’s crucial to find things that we really enjoy without being rewarded for excelling in it, and I would encourage everyone to find something they’re undeniably (but shamelessly) bad at, and be open to thesuccess it may bring!