On desirable undesirable results

I once was in a hotel and saw a beautifully carved watermelon, in which the different shades of green white and red were used to make beautiful figures. I instantly wanted to try to do that myself too. I didn’t, and forgot about it for some years. But a while back I saw similar pictures of melon carvings on the Internet. I had a Galia melon left, so decided to give it a try.

 Ha! Was I in for a surprise. Nobody told me you actually need skills to do such a thing.

 My result looked nothing like I had imagined. I kind of arrogantly assumed that I would make the most awesome melon art imaginable by just touching the knife. In reality the melon was overripe, my tools not sharp and most importantly it was my first try. It was like expecting to paint a Rembrandt while the actual result was comparable to a 5 year old’s first time finger painting. Oh joy.

 So here is the lesson. If you are going to try new things and challenge yourself creatively you are going to fail. Not once. Not twice. Endless number of times. And that’s not a bad thing. Of course, the moment itself it can suck big time -or small time- but in essence it is just another necessary result of your growth. I make crap that I am not happy about all the time. I just don't show every single one of my failed experiments on my blog.

 Don’t be too hard on yourself. Don’t have unrealistic expectations (as a perfectionist I am guilty of this more often than I would like to be). Don’t expect to get to the result you want to without struggling.

 We need to realize that most often good results take hard work and a lot of effort. Most often we don’t get to see the journey to such a result, we only see the result. If we then start comparing ourselves to others it might make us feel incompetent. Comparing ourselves to others is a bad idea in the first place, but especially so if we are selective in our comparisons. It makes us narrow minded.

 So please get out there and fail big time. It’s OK. It is necessary. Desired results will only come after facing many undesired results as well. Which, in a way, makes those undesired results kind of desirable doesn’t it?