Betsy Preves doesn’t really sing anymore.
Growing up, the classically trained soprano trained intensively and sang at the Washington National Cathedral and New York City Cathedral. In time, other things began to fill her life – her career in fundraising to support the arts, a husband, two children. Her skills have deteriorated. A few years ago, Parves took an entrance exam for the choir, she was told no, and she decided that this was it.
“I know what it feels like to sing at a very high level and I can’t do it anymore,” said the 36-year-old Washington resident, “so I don’t want to do it at all.”
She misses it. But when she sings her daughter a lullaby and it turns out to be fake, she gets upset. “I wish I could just let go,” she says.
So many of us are bad at being bad. When our children go to school, learn to dance or play a musical instrument, we urge them: try something, keep practicing, you’re just getting started. And yet, when we face our mediocrity, we fold in embarrassment, despair or leave the field altogether.
I heard more swearing when I interviewed people for this column detailing their failures than I heard when I wrote a column devoted to swearing. We really, really don’t like to be bad at things.
What if we miss something?
“It’s such a relief not to have to be good,” said Karen Rinaldi, an advertising executive from Manhattan who, by her own admission, is a terrible surfer. After 20 years on the board, she’s still badass and she loves it.
There is the excitement of being on the water, a feeling that every wave she does manage to catch is a bonus. But there is also great satisfaction in not having to be an expert, the freedom to ask for help and rely on others in a way she never had at work or at home with the children.
Back on land, she says she is more understanding and patient about the mistakes of others. “You suddenly realize, ‘Wow, they’re trying,'” she said.
Rinaldi, whose experience led to the publication of a book on what can be learned from failure, recommends asking ourselves: “What have we always wanted to do or try and were too afraid of?” Whatever it is, she says, start doing it. If it will be difficult for you, internalize the fact that you are just starting out.
“Go for it with all humility and say, ‘I’m new,'” she says. “People want to help you learn, it makes them feel good.”
Dealing with looking to be perfect at every moment
We used to be better at being bad. A recent study found that average levels of social perfectionism—the feeling that we must show the world that we are flawless—among more than 41,000 college students rose by about a third from 1989 to 2016.
Over time, competition for education and jobs has increased, explains Thomas Curren, lead author of the study and lecturer in psychology and behavioral science at the LSE. Images of perfection fill our feed on social networks, alongside advertisements promising us that we wouldn’t be so happy if we only bought this thing or tried that product. Parents sometimes add to the pressure, fearing that their children will slide up the socioeconomic ladder.
“The whole fabric of society is held on this, our feeling that we are not good enough,” said Dr. Korn.
Two years after starting his own business, Elliot Pepper struggled with some of the basics. The intricacies of tax codes weren’t a problem for the Baltimore-area accountant and financial planner, but he couldn’t keep up with client referrals. He forgot to send invoices, and never received money he earned honestly.
At conferences of small entrepreneurs like him, “I’d nod my head, like, ‘Yeah, I’m doing bad,'” he said. Admitting he wasn’t good at some things felt like admitting he was bad in general.
Finally he solved the problem by bringing in a business partner, someone who is good exactly where he is bad. When he confessed the problems, and saw his new partner fix them, he realized that his fears of being judged badly were only in his head. “People don’t care that much,” he said.
learn to let go
Our expectations don’t help. I started doing yoga here and there in the summer, after a running injury took me out of my favorite sport.
When I whined to Syd Schultz, a professional mountain biker, that I was bad at posture, and cringed every time the teacher approached my mat to correct my posture, her response was, what do you expect?
“It’s a little insulting to people who have spent years of their lives acquiring skills to think you’ll have them overnight,” said Schultz of Los Alamos, New Mexico. The 31-year-old cyclist spent last winter learning a form of Nordic skiing, climbing steep hills in hopes of improving her downhill skiing skills.
“We expect linear progress,” she says. Years spent in cycling training taught her that improvement sometimes happens in spurts and stops, and are sometimes preceded by long periods of stagnation or even periods when we get worse.
From the moment Zachary Bock caught a glimpse of a BMX competition on TV when he was 14 years old in North Dakota, he was convinced that that was where his future lay. He used money from his salary as a newspaper distributor to buy stunt bikes and built ramps in the yard. After high school, he went to Southern California to work and train in a special facility that has rubber padding and ramps.
He discovered two things: he is not good enough to be a professional; He’s not sure he wants to be a professional.
The life of a professional BMX rider is not as glamorous as he described, he says. As he stayed alongside his heroes, he saw some of them struggle with financial difficulties, drug addictions and injuries. “I could already understand then that this was not what would make me happy,” he says.
He eventually left the west coast of the US and enrolled in college in Colorado. He is now a capital advisor. These days, Bok, 39, goes to local parks on his bike, then when he slides down a metal railing, lands beautifully after a 360-degree turn – or lands badly after Less than 360 – he feels like a small child, merging with the moment in a zen calm. The goal is simply to be there.
“The advantage of not pushing myself every day,” he says, “is that I can ride whenever I want.”