You have permission to be bad at things

PSA: It is worth giving yourself permission to be bad at things.

Recently I found myself avoiding doing things because I might do them "badly" in some sense. I can't guarantee I won't. If I reach out to someone, whatever I say, they might receive the message as annoying, bothersome, boring, or trivial. It might seem ignorant, boorish, arrogant, overconfident, stubborn, vibe-blind, or disagreeable. It might read needy, anxious, clingy, dependent, or underconfident. In other words: It might be "bad."

All of that is true. It might be. If I take a step back, it doesn't seem likely. But it is not vanishingly unlikely. It is well within the realm of possibilities that anything I do is (received as) bad in any of the senses just described. Nobody can guarantee they will never do anything badly, and that includes the social domain.

I feel a tension here because I value being good at things. But doing things well requires doing them poorly first. It's worth remembering I can't skip that step.

I find it helpful to explicitly, verbally, give myself permission to be any and all of these things (and other not listed). It is fine to be terrible sometimes. I can be as I am. If I am ridiculous at times, I can be so. That is an okay way to be.