By Maggie Borland
How to be Bad at Something (and be okay with it)
Gamers often experience a mental paralysis when it comes to working towards their goals that exist outside of a game. They know they should be doing something to further their own dreams, but can’t bring themselves to do it. Where does this problem come from, and how do we start fixing it?
A lot of the paralysis gamers feel may stem from how they’re treated at a young age. Research shows gamers are actually smarter than the average population. Because of this, as children, these players are often told they’re very smart, which causes them to develop the identity that they’re a “smart” person. Kids that experience this will start to do things that reinforce their “smart” identity while staying away from the things that contrast with it. As a young child, this may seem very harmless. Over time, though, these children will start to avoid difficult things. Whenever they do something that’s challenging, they feel stupid, which contradicts the “smart” image they have of themselves.
As these kids grow into adults, their avoidance for things that are difficult becomes a part of their behavior. They will run away from any experience that makes them feel less than smart. Often the hardest things for them to do involve other people seeing how incompetent they are. Thus avoidance paralyzes them in their current state because they refuse to fail so they cannot grow.
It’s important to ask, where does this roadblock come from? Is it from fearing judgement because they feel stupid? If the answer is yes, the first step to reframe their mindset is to stop overvaluing being good or bad at something, but to treat everything in terms of their own experience. To start thinking of themselves as inexperienced instead of stupid. As their mindset starts to shift, they’ll realize the solution to inexperience is to do the things they previously thought they were “bad” at. When trying new things with this mindset, they’ll often be okay with failing because it’s a normal part of gaining experience. The people we perceive to be the smartest are just the ones that have a lot of experience. It’s important to learn how to let ourselves fail so we can grow and learn how to be better.