… socializing … learning languages … playing an instrument … singing … dancing … etc.
But is that true?
When I question the why behind each of those things that I’m not good at, it turns out that they haven’t been important to me at all.
So instead of saying “I’m not good at ___“ I should really say “___ hasn’t been important to me”. I could be good at it, if it would’ve been important to me.
Here two examples to bring the point home…
Learning languages
When I went to school, I had zero interest in learning English, so I wasn’t any good at it. When I was in my early 30th, I discovered my love for traveling, and while working on various international projects, it became important for me to speak English. I had an incredible drive to learn English as quick as possible, read whatever possible in English, listened to English radio stations, and changed all my devices to English. In 2008 I moved to the UK, and English became the language I speak and communicate in every single day.
Playing an instrument
During primary school, my parents thought it would be important for me to learn to play an instrument, which got me into music school, learning to play the recorder. I disliked learning musical notes and was actually more interested in getting home from school to build some interesting stuff, which made me quit music school after my first year. What stuck with me, was the believe that I wouldn’t be any good at anything with music. Over the recent years, I got more and more interested in acoustic music, started to enjoy small gigs, listing to amazing buskers in Brighton and somehow my interest grew to the point where I wanted to learn playing guitar, which I started about 2 weeks ago. It got important to me to learn playing the guitar and I’m ok, that this will take time and effort…
Next time you say that you aren’t good at ___, ask yourself if ___ has actually been important to you.