Embrace Your Suckiness

Growing up I usually quit anything new I tried that I wasn’t immediately good at, which no surprise was pretty much everything. I had some weird belief that if I wasn’t immediately good then that meant I was a failure and an embarrassment. I wrongly felt like all the other kids my age were better than me and that I would never be that good. It never occurred to me that I could get better if I tried because my self-esteem was unable to handle the small set-backs.

 Now that I’m older I look at all the things I never stuck with: figure skating, art, karate, ballet, hip-hop, tennis, rock climbing, piano, surfing. I was afraid to fail, afraid to get hurt and afraid to be myself. If I had stuck with just one of those things I could be a master by now! Oh how youth is wasted on the young.

 But this is why it’s so important that we get this message across to everyone. You CAN achieve your goal, you CAN reach your dream and YES it is MEANT to be this hard! Yes you are MEANT to suck at first! That’s ok. I wish I would have believed it back then. 

But now I do believe and I’m am sucking hard and fast at as many things as I can. I suck every week at singing, guitar, dancing, computing, writing, modeling, and violin.

And I’m loving it so much that I’m adding new things to practice too. I’m practicing positive mindset, affirmations, life coaching, and overcoming fear. And this past week I decided I’m ok at sucking at dancing so I may as well suck at Aerial skills and Pole acrobatics as well. These two dancing sports are so challenging and when you first start they are actually physically painful to get used to and I LOVE IT! I am embracing the pain and my own suckiness at them because I know that I can push through and become a beautiful skilled dancer. 

(If you want to keep up with my progress feel free to check my Instagram: fashionablestreamer where I have posted some aerial and pole video/photos. )

I’m so passionate about this new willingness to suck and I want to share it with you. What is it that you are afraid to suck at? What goal do you secretly wish to achieve, but haven’t started because you know you’ll make a fool of yourself? Are you secretly wishing to sing, but your worried you don’t have Mariah Carey’s voice? Hint: Most famous singers can’t even go as high as Mariah. Let’s stop listening to our fear and finally take that age old wisdom Nike and Shia Lebeuf have been throwing in our faces : “Just Do It!” Embrace the suck and start working towards that dream knowing you will mess up, you will sound or look or feel stupid at first, you will fail and you will suck. It’s ok, in fact it’s necessary. Take a video of yourself sucking , share it with your friend and keep it in your drive because one day you are not going to suck anymore. When that day comes I want you to share a new video on your social media  with the world comparing the time when you sucked to your future aweosemness. Make sure you tell me about it. You are going to win and it’s going to inspire the heck out of everyone! I promise! 

Some practical steps:

1. Lower your expectations for yourself for when you start. I’m not saying lower your dreams, I’m saying lower your expectations of how you should be able to perform right now. Instead expect to totally suck at this new thing for at least 1 year. If you don’t suck as bad as you thought then use that delightful surprise to motivate you to push through. If you suck worse then lower your expectations of where you should be and how long it should take again. Be patient with yourself and allow things to take a little longer. Wouldn’t you rather accomplish this in 5 years than try to squeeze it into 2, burn out and never get there at all? 
2. Talk realistically to yourself about your new plan to EMBRACE THE SUCK!Actually talk to yourself to prepare your mind for your new outlook. Here’s an example dialogue you could have with your self:  “Hey (insert your name) I am going to try this new thing, if I totally hate it we don’t have to keep doing it, but we are NOT going to quit just because it’s hard. Just so you know I am expecting that we will totally suck at first, but that’s part of the fun. We will enjoy it all the same and learn something new from every fail.”
3. Decide before your start your new goal NOT to beat yourself up when you do suck and decide what to say to yourself when that happens. Agree that you will not say things like “I can’t do this” or “I’ll never be good enough.” Even allowing these thoughts for a split second will change your entire deameanor and shut down your brain’s ability to learn new things. Instead change those thoughts out for affirmations or positive thinking such as : “Yes I suck now, but I choose to embrace this suckiness and push forwiard!” “I know I am getting better.” “This is becoming easier for me every time.”  “I am getting closer to my goals.”
4. See every set back as a reminder to Never Ever Give Up! If you have decided this thing is what you want to strive for then you can be guaranteed you will face set backs. Even when you start overcoming the suckiness of being a beginner you will face setbacks. I like to think of these setbacks as little Gremlins intentionally trying to take me off track. They are definitely going to come and their goal is to make you think it’s all over. But when something turns out the opposite of what you hoped is it all over? Does a Gremlin in your house mean you’re already dead? No! Put that Gremlin in the Blender and tell it you are not going to let the Gremlin’s ruin Christmas! The truth is the little Gremlins are attracted by your success, they were always jealous of the happy Gizmo. When you have a setback take it as a sign that you are on the right track because resistance comes to those on their true path. You must face that resistance, tell it you embraced the suck and you aren’t letting the Gremlins take away the success you’ve worked so hard for! Then get to creatively solving that problem and never ever ever give up ! Breakthroughs often hide around the corner of breakdowns. It’s not game over yet. 

And please keep in touch with me! I want to know if anything I’m going through or saying resonates with you. I wanna know about your goals, your struggles and your progress! Comment below or feel free to reach out to me on twitter, Instagram, discord, twitch or any of my many other platforms. This post Here has links to all of them: hint: they are pretty much all under the name “Korenski23”.