Sure, do more things you’re bad at!

Wow, how funny is that. When I lately tried to figure out, what it is, what I really want to do, I had very confusing thoughts. I talked to my closest friends about this topic with a bottle of red and it seemed interesting and pretty tough at the same time. We started to remember our childhood, our teenage years, and our last few years too.

From our childhood on over to our “now” we are told, taught and reminded all the time on things like:

1. If you can’t sing or dance – you are not creative.
2. If you don’t like history – go read more books about it.
3. If you don’t like politics – go watch TV and update yourself.
4. If you are bad at maths – go get private lessons immediately.
5. If you can’t fix your lightbulb (Hey me!) – *a deep-drawn sigh*
6. If you don’t like sports – you are an unsporty idiot, go and start to love it.

There’s an infinite list of each person in this world of things they can’t do or are horrible at. For example my handcraft skills are at a level of a monkey and I absolutely don’t like politics and have no idea who is who. And trust me, I survived some hardcore judgment regarding this. I almost ended up in gulag because I have no idea of the names of all politicians in this world. Honestly, I don’t care.

So what is the critical point? All of our lives the world makes us pushing our weaknesses, supporting us at every point to be good at things we are truly bad at or we don’t like. We are judged, that we don’t know something we “should” know. We are judged, that we’re not interested in something we “should” be interested in. How uneconomic is that for our universe? So after years of e.g. studying something you hated (Hey me again!), you can say proudly:

“I fought for that shit I hate so hard and now look who I am!”

What would it be like if you’d say instead:

“I love to sing. Singing came naturally into my life without fighting for it or pushing it away. I identified that I was good at it, I did not spend years on learning it. I have built something beautiful on the base of something I am good at.”

But what would everyone including yourself think, living in out modern society? That you are not doing enough, that you don’t fight enough, that you brag, that everything in your life appeared from nowhere, that you don’t put effort and you’re lazy, that you didn’t work hard to achieve your goal, that you have rich parents and that you, that you, that you.

Is that really necessary to begin a war with your weaknesses to reach something? 

Of course it’s not. The percentage of the few lucky people, who identified their real strengths and talents and have built a professional and personal life on it, is quite poor. How beautiful is it if you do what you love, if you do it good, if that is your talent. How much love could you give, how much integrity, how much support, how much value.

But how can we know as kids that we have to keep on working on stuff where we are good at instead of trying to improve our bad skills?

Well it’s a tough one. Because our parents get panicked if they notice that you are bad at something “regular”. They think, that they need to fix it. So they support the skills, you’re bad at and overlook your real talents or desires. I mean, if you grow up always working on special skills, which your parents / society tells you to work on, not even you know what you actually could be good at. 

And during your life, you will think that’s it is too late to start all over, that it is too much effort, that you maybe aren’t good enough or people have done it before you hundred times. Yes, I feel it every day, when I try to make the same decision all over again to become a fulltime “artist”, who creates music, who writes, who shares thoughts, who wants to connect with like-minded through public expression.

Just one month before I had no idea, that I should start foster my talents more and stop fighting for the activities in my life, which don’t make me happy, which I am not as good at. Nobody ever told me that.

But a good thing about realizing that my whole life I was supporting skills I am bad at is, that now I know exactly what I shouldn’t pursue anymore. What a blessing.

And the only action-items now are: remaining courageous, remaining positive, remaining confident in what I am good at. And being grateful for all the years of fostering my weaknesses. After all they delivered my thoughts right here.