But what if my brain gives me a bad grade in Hobby? :(
Nah for real though. Just. Be bad at shit. Not to get all motivational poster about it, but if you're literally the worst person alive at a given thing, that still means you put more effort into it than the millions of people who have never done it at all.
I'm learning CW right now, and I'm absolutely dogshit, but I do not care. It's not my job, I have no obligation to be an expert at it. Hell, that's just a good rule of thumb for most things in life. Don't force yourself to become an expert simply because "amateur" doesn't feel good enough.
Absolutely on my top 10 list of rules to live your life by. Many years ago, I wanted to start making altered journals out of old books but I did not have any idea what I was doing and so I named my first book "the ugly book" and told myself that if anything looked good then it was unintentional cuz the intent is just to make ugly art (at least I could learn how not to do it in the future.) And now I'm proud of the work that I do today.
And I have a really horrible time implementing any kind of organizational system for my life: to do lists or calendars, agendas, bullet journals, you name it, I've tried it and I just keep struggling. But I'm not going to quit and I just started another system and I was starting to get frustrated and on the second day I told myself I was going to do it badly because I had already been working on it for a while and needed to get started on my project at work and had a moment of frustration. I chose to give myself permission to do it badly instead of giving into the never ending urge to punish myself for not achieving perfection.
If you're anything like me you think it must be perfect. You would probably argue with me that you have any choice in choosing to do it less than perfect. I used to think that for so long too. But if you take some time to think about where the messages of perfection are coming from and whose voice that really is you may begin to realize, as I did, that it was 99% my own voice and I could let it go. (Learning how to let go is still a lot of hard work so I'm not saying it's easy but once you finally at least see that you have the choice, doors begin to open up and things get easier. I don't know if they ever get easy. We are ADHD after all 😉)
I realized a long time ago that it was my own voice telling me to be better, not anyone else's. I realized it in sixth grade, when I broke a school record my cousin had set. I was so proud of myself, but everyone kept telling me that it didn't matter. That there was nothing for me to be proud of, because my cousin set the school record first. That was when I realized I was holding myself to an impossible standard. That I was the only one judging my self worth off of my ability to excel at literally everything I decide to do.
Unfortunately, I never did anything useful with that information, because what I am truly the best at is holding myself to impossible standards. Nobody else gave a shit if I did well or not, so I was going to give a shit. I took the idea of "the only opinion that really matters is my own," and took it to an unhealthy place. Something to add to the list of shit to work on when I start back at therapy next month.
That voice comes from so many places. I think self understanding is the key to the path to "easier"(but never easy,). Good luck on your journey towards healthier mindsets.
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u/Milkyway_Potato ok ok i'll finish disco elysium jesus 2d ago edited 2d ago
But what if my brain gives me a bad grade in Hobby? :(
Nah for real though. Just. Be bad at shit. Not to get all motivational poster about it, but if you're literally the worst person alive at a given thing, that still means you put more effort into it than the millions of people who have never done it at all.
I'm learning CW right now, and I'm absolutely dogshit, but I do not care. It's not my job, I have no obligation to be an expert at it. Hell, that's just a good rule of thumb for most things in life. Don't force yourself to become an expert simply because "amateur" doesn't feel good enough.