I realize that so much of my identity is defined by “not losing”. And that’s a bit messed up for many reasons. But I’m going to talk about two here:
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There are a bunch of things that I’ve never tried to do seriously because I couldn’t convince myself that I could do them properly. I pretty much gave up before trying. Just to protect that identity of being someone who doesn’t lose. As I’m becoming a bit older, I’m realizing that I actually wanted to do some of those things, and it’s very hard to do after so many years of building that identity.
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As you do more and more things, you’ll have higher expectations for what you can do. But at some point, you’re going to mess something up! I feel like a total failure when that happens, even though it’s a success in and of itself that I’ve been able to raise the bar this high in the first place.
I probably should start being more mindful about why I do (or don’t do) things from now on. I never thought it would backfire like this.