Constant reinforcement makes your position more rigid and more extreme.
Roger McNamee
I used to work with a girl who had grown up with doting parents and grandparents. She’d been given money, university paid for, lavished with praise…and she was one of the most obnoxious people I have ever met. She was so completely obsessed with herself. And she pushed every button I have ever had. I grew up with healthy and regular doses of reality. Honestly, I probably could’ve done with a little more unconditional love. I learned to be self-deprecating at a young age. It was self-preservation and it always got me a laugh. Then it became a very bad habit.
Given the option of being so completely convinced of my own perfection, or a little too hard on myself, I am going to choose the latter every time. However, the trick to growing into a fully functioning human is to take the time to sit and look at, contemplate, all the things that have been reinforced for us, over and over. Where am I rigid? Where am I extreme in my views? What about what I think about myself? Are those things true? The good, the bad and the ugly? Just because Nan says you’ll never learn to cook doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because your grade 9 teacher said you were too short to play tennis at a high level, doesn’t mean it’s not true. Just because your mum thinks you sing better than Adele…well you see where I am going with this.
Every adult has the ability for self-reflection and exploration. We come unstuck with self-awareness when we’re either not being honest with ourselves or when we are being far too hard on ourselves. It’s important to be real when we’re seeking an audience, but the learning process is dependant on letting it all hang out! Who cares if someone said they didn’t like your singing? Go sing somewhere else! Take lessons if you want. There are so many free one online. There’s lessons for EVERYTHING – there are more free lessons online than you could study in a lifetime.
So many people tell me they aren’t creative. It makes me so sad. Everyone is creative, but maybe not everyone has found an outlet for that creativity yet. Even sadder is that for many people that just means they haven’t worked out a way of *monetising their creativity. All we really owe this world is to express our gifts and talents and holding out means the world is just that little bit poorer.
{*True story – When I started my first blog (on BlogSpot many moons ago!) I saw this word ‘monetising’. My art-obsessed brain actually read it as ‘Monet-ising’ as in the famous painter. hahaha. He struggled but certainly managed to monetise the shit out of his creativity!}We have to take to
People might have said I couldn’t sing, but they couldn’t say I didn’t sing.
Florence Foster Jenkins
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