#less than useless. you cannot improve with a mindset of everything is always perfect exactly as it is | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

miraculous-ninjabird · 2 months

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TLDR for my rant: it’s perfectly okay to admit you are bad at something, say something YOU made looks bad, and/or talk about the ways something you made didn’t live up to your expectations as long as someone does not internalize the message that because they are bad at something or did something bad doesn’t mean that they themselves are a bad person.

Desperately trying to explain to my therapist the difference between ‘I’m a terrible artists’ (self-derogatory and self-defeating) and ‘I’m a terrible artists (I fully acknowledge that I could be better at this skill given time and effort and that all art has value to someone. However. I am specifically choosing not to hone this skill due to a number of reasons and will never consider myself an ‘artist’. Thus, my art will never get better and I am okay with this)

And how I fall solidly into the latter category and how frustrating it is that it’s never seen that way. I say ‘I’m not an artist lol’ or ‘look at my terrible little drawing!” <-worst drawing you’ve ever seen but that’s okay. It’s always, always met by ‘don’t say that! Everybody is an artist!’ And ‘don’t talk bad about yourself and the things you create :(‘ like.

NO!

Some people do desperately need to hear and internalize those messages but I’m not one of them! My art is terrible! That’s the point! I’m never going to be good at it because I’ll never care to but damn if I’m not having the greatest time ever creating terrible art!

I don’t love the online implication (and real world implication when I tried to take art classes) that being okay with the fact I am bad at something is…a bad thing. A simple fact of life is that everyone is bad at something and it’s okay to both admit and be okay with that fact.

Tangentially related but it’s also okay to admit that when you are new at a skill…you’re probably gonna be bad at it. Like. Someone who’s still learning is gonna have some terrible first efforts and that’s the point. It gives you a growth point.

Example: I made a bag. I decided to add a zipper. It did not go as planned and the end result is in fact rather terrible. Simply a fact. However! I put a zipper! In a bag!! And maybe it does look horrible but that is something I’ve never done before and I did it all by myself and I can simultaneously admit it looks awful but be proud of the fact that I figured it out.

Like art I could be content with the success of finishing the project, but I can also use this as a launching point to get better. What I choose to do is up to me and I don’t appreciate people trying to tell me that I’m not allowed to call an objectively terrible finished project as such.

You cannot and will not ever get better at a skill if you are unwilling to accept that you will be bad at it. It makes that learning that acceptance all the harder when people are taught that they shouldn’t ever say bad things about what they make.

Rather than teaching the message ‘nothing anyone makes could possibly be bad in any way (skill wise)’ we would promote acceptance of ‘this is bad and that’s okay’

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk about ‘not every negative self-comment about something someone is self-deprecating’

#robin’s twittering #mini rant #listen people may not agree with me but #my therapist made a good point that it’s incredibly invalidating #when I say I’m not an artist and people can’t accept that because it’s ’self-depreciating’#I’ve thought about this a lot but most recently it came up with crochet #I teach people and the very first thing I always say is ‘no matter what you first project is it’s going to look terrible’#and someone took issue with that #but I think going into a new skill #with the understanding that it’s not going to be perfect and not to let that get you down #is so much healthier #it reduces frustration and promotes a better understanding of learning what went wrong so it can be corrected #also see: constructive criticism. super frustrating when you as for criticism and only hear ‘this is great’#less than useless. you cannot improve with a mindset of everything is always perfect exactly as it is

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