Why you can always do it?

“I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that.” — Pippi Longstocking

I love this quote!

It really encapsulates a lot of the curiosity and determination to learn that many of us lose as we grow up.

From a young age, many of us probably only received praise for the things we did well or for the things we were naturally good at.

As a result we became highly dependent on validation.

This taught us to spend more time proving how good we were instead of actually getting better.

We longed for praise like “You are so smart” or “Wow you're a natural” and rarely got told “Well done for really persevering” or “Wow you put a lot of effort into that and it paid off”.

We learnt that failure was bad and should be avoided at all costs.

As our egos developed, it’s only normal that we then started to shy away from doing things we’d never tried before.

In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, there’s a saying: “There’s no such thing as losing, you either win or you learn”.

Everytime you lose, you are getting better, everytime you lose, you are growing.

When you think like this, you can focus on learning instead of trying to be good.

So next time you feel resistance towards doing something new or something that you’re not good at:

Drop your ego and see it as an opportunity to learn.

Just do it.

Change your way of seeing failure, learn to embrace it instead.

What’s something you’ve never tried before that you should definitely be able to do?

#failure #learning #personaldevelopment #motivation #whatinspiresme