Even though your inner perfectionist will demand it.
And your harsh inner critic will punish you for falling short of impossible standards.
Truth is, you’re not meant to be good at everything.
I think we gifted folks miss out because our perfectionism gets the best of us.
We try things—painting, public speaking, learning guitar—and expect to be great right away. And when we’re not, we quietly back away. We won’t call it quitting—but that’s what it is.
We forget that the point isn’t perfection.
It’s exposure.
It’s expression.
It’s becoming more fully you.
What if the next thing you try isn’t about being good—
but about becoming someone more interesting?
Not a master, but someone who can appreciate mastery.
There’s a story I love that speaks to this, from Kurt Vonnegut:
When I was 15 I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes. And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.” And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.” And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.
Imagine how that shift could change your inner dialogue.
How it might make life more enjoyable.
How it might set you free.
Try something just because it calls to you. Let it be messy. Let it be imperfect. Let it make you more you.
