Posted in Blogging, choices, depression, Experience

What can you do well?

 

New Year’s Eve reference above.

I enjoy following people on Instagram. It gives me a peek into lives all over the world. Some of Instagramers are exceptional photographers. I love following the bakers and drooling over their desserts. I follow seamstresses whose creations are so incredible it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around the fact someone made them.

I’ve never done anything really well. I have friends who are excellent cooks, a friend who is an artist. I’ve got a friend who makes incredible things from beads. My sister is an outstanding teacher. My mother creates beautiful cards. There is the friend whose garden looks like it’s from the pages of a magazine. Or my friend who loves on a small farm while working as a dentist. My oldest daughter sings like an angel and my youngest is creative. She writes, does photography, graphic art designs and blogs. The list goes on and on.

Me? Nothing. Nada. Rien. Zilch. Zero. You get the idea. All I do well is depression which doesn’t create the life I want. My nightmares have returned which causes serious sleep disturbances.

I’d love to know what you do well? Where do you exceed average? Are you a successful business person? An artist? Unusually creative? A baker? A great cook? Gardner? Great at explaining faith in a way people can understand? A writer? Please share because I’d love know.

Posted in Blogging, choices, Experience, fear, Goal, New life, Uncategorized, values, Writing

Lesson to Unlearn #2

 Why would want to try that? You’ll only fail.

  

Yes that is the lesson I was taught. I’m sure my parents and grandmother thought they were protecting me from  disappointment. If I struggled and failed then what would they say? Would they be able to comfort me?

I remember wanting to enter a pageant for a second time and asking for a new formal dress. I was promptly told no and when I asked why? It was simple. I wasn’t going to win anyway. However there was a hiccup in my parents’ plan. I did win. I won in the same dress I wore the year before. Obviously I didn’t need a new dress to win, but to have had words of encouragement, a sense that my parents believed in my ability to succeed and if I didn’t win, the success was in the effort and what I learned would have helped build my confidence.

There are lots of things I haven’t tried in my life for fear of failure. But I have been able to push through the fear from time to time and challenge myself with new things. I spent a year learning on my own how to dance so I could make the drill team squad. I worked for a year saving money to spend six weeks on a college tour of Europe. I auditioned for and went on a game show. {I won}. I went to France in my own at 40 for 10 days. But I still have a list of things I would love to try but fear of failure keeps be down.

So lesson #2 to unlearn is that when you try something you’ll only fail.

Success isn’t defined by winning. It’s defined by trying. There is no shame in trying some new or something difficult. It says courage, adventure and strength. These quotes are profound because they are so true.

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

Theodore Roosevelt

I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time. Herbert Bayard Swope

Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

Winston S. Churchill

When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.

Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously… I’m Kidding