It doesn’t matter if you’re not good at something; just doing it will help you improve.
Having a passion is often associated with being good at what you do. It’s a personal interest, a skill you love doing, and something you enjoy showing others.
There’s also an implicit idea that if you’re passionate about something, you should be able to demonstrate it easily.
But if you’re not skilled at something, you may feel embarrassed to talk about it. And if you’re just starting out, you might think that you’ll never get better at it.
But that’a not what a hobby is. A hobby is defined by the dictionary as…
“A pursuit outside of your normal job engaged in especially for fun.”
There’s nothing about any specific skills or talents required for success. You don’t need to be especially skilled or talented.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that having a fun activity is useless. If an activity is not useful to you, then you won’t get better at it. However, if an activity is not useful but you enjoy doing it, then you may learn some useful skills from it.
Before you give up on your failing hobby, consider these things:
Being Present
If you’re having fun playing a game, then there’s nothing wrong with continuing to play it even if you know you could be better.
It brings you more fully into the here and now, the space where you can begin to improve other aspects of your lives. Eckhart Tolle teaches us how enjoying a single moment in its entirety can help us cope with the stresses of everyday living.
‘Are you worried about your life right now? Do you feel like you are stuck somewhere between the past and the present? Is the present a place where you want to be and the past a place you can’t go back to?
Or is the present just another place where you are waiting for something else to happen?
You may not know what you want, but you do know what you don’t want. And if you could live without any of those things, would you really choose them? Would you rather be living in the present instead of worrying about the past or dreaming about the next day?’
If you want to learn more about Eckhart Tolle’s philosophy, I would recommend reading his entire book, The Power of NOW. His basic premise is that we cannot change anything until we accept who we are right now. We must stop trying to get somewhere else and instead focus on living our lives fully here and now.
Find Your Flow and Improve Your Focus
If we’ve been bad at something for a long time, it becomes easier to stop because we get bored with it. If we keep trying, however, we get so engrossed in what we’ve been working on that we forget everything else.
When you focus intensely on something you really like doing, you enter a state called flow, or being “in the zone”. It’s a state where you become so overtaken and energised by a task that outside stimuli fade away.
According to Dr. Csikszentimihalyi, Ph D., people who regularly experience the “state of being in the zone” enjoy numerous benefits including increased motivation, creativity, and overall well-being.
It doesn’t really matter whether focusing on learning a dance choreography helps you become a better dance performer, or if focusing on painting helps you become a better painter; both teach you how to stay focused on one thing at a time.
Playfulness and Enjoyment
As a young adult, I learned from my mistakes by trying out different hobbies, even if I was not particularly good at any of them.
We rarely learn new things just because we want to learn them. It’s usually about achieving some kind of objective. If your hobby doesn’t get you anywhere, though, there’s no reason not to experiment and have fun.
Elizabeth Gilbert writes in her book Big Magic that her friend, Susan, started taking up figure skating again when she was 40, even though she hadn’t done so for 20+ year.
She loves it so much that she would rather be doing it than anything else.
Susan took up a new hobby because she liked doing it; it gave her a sense of playfulness rather than seriousness, so do something different, have some fun, get messy, be silly, and don’t take yourself too seriously.
Fun and enjoyment are essential elements of a fulfilling lifestyle.
Endless Possibilities
If you have a hobby you enjoy, even if you’re bad at it, your enjoyment won’t be dependent on any improvement or achievement.
And if you don’t set limits for yourself by setting goals or visions of success, there’s no limitation to the things you could achieve through it.
You might go to a dance lesson and be terrible at dancing; you may even get laughed at by others who see you trying.
You might decide to run once or twice, but you won’t be able to keep going for long without stopping. Or maybe you’ll take up hiking instead.
If you draw something simple, it might not turn out well, but the end abstract results look good.
If you’ve been working hard for hours, then take some time off to relax and unwind. It might help you get back into a good mood when you’re ready to talk things out again.
But if any of these things happen, then there may be some new opportunities for you.
Breaking a Monotony
If you’re good at something, there’s always pressure to improve. Scheduling in practice can take away from your leisure time and turn into a demand and a burden.
A good thing to do if you’re bored is to start an activity that you don’t particularly enjoy but that has some sort of benefit for you. For example, you could take up a new sport or learn a language.
It may be hard to keep up with everything that needs doing, but if you’re feeling enthusiastic about something else, then it might help you get through your day.
Ultimately, if you’re passionate about something, then even if you don’t feel like you’re any good at it, keep trying. If it’s helping you learn something new, then it’s adding value to your overall experience of living.