You Suck. And it’s Okay.
"Be humble enough to suck for as long as it takes you to become better"
-Rachel Hollis
I stumbled upon an image of this quote on Instagram just now and actually laughed out loud at how accurate it was to how I have felt in the last 24 hours. I recently took on learning a new topic at work. It's something I've never trained on before and I've never even used before. During my preparation for a mock virtual training on the topic, everything went wrong that could have possibly gone wrong. Even the company we use that produces the virtual environments for us was down and completely glitchy. The little I had already learned how to do in the last few months since starting my job was now different, and so prepping for this particularly hard topic was now made even more difficult. I went into this thing knowing that I was ill-prepared. I knew it wasn't going to be good. I knew I would fail. But I did it anyway because I knew I would learn from the process. Failing today, would get me to "better" and it would be a much shorter road then if I tried on my own.
You may not realize how difficult it is for me, a perfectionist, to do something when I know it will be anything less than perfect. I pride myself in doing a good job. I pride myself in being prepared, in following through, and doing my very best and I think that's a good thing until it gets in my way of becoming better. The moment the need to be perfect stops me from doing something I need to do is the moment I start selling myself short.
Sucking at something today gets you to being pretty good at something tomorrow. Imagine what next week will look like? Next month? Next year? Years ago Malcolm Gladwell popularized the theory that 10,000 hours of practice is what it takes to master anything. Of course, this theory has been widely questioned and debated over the years since his book was published. Many researchers argue that there are more things that come into play - how old you are when you started, natural talent, etc. They say there are many experts who became experts with much less than 10,000 hours. My response to them - well, duh. Everyone is different and you may master something faster than I would, but the whole point is to do something with your hours. I believe the point Gladwell was trying to make was that becoming an expert at anything takes a lot of time and a lot of support from the people around us. Whether it takes me 10,000 or 10 to master this new topic I'll only get there by being humble enough to admit that I need the hours in the first place.
In conclusion, you suck. It's okay. Admitting it is the first step. Now you can get out there and do what it takes to be better.
