It’s Okay that your Pinterest DIY was a Fail.

Hello, friends! Happy Monday! I hope that you had a wonderful weekend and were able to spend time with your loved ones. I had such a lovely weekend. I was able to spend lots of time with my favorite people, eat lots of yummy food, and most importantly, celebrate the fact that He is risen!

This blog is brought to you by my Sunday morning. I found a really cute Pinterest recipe for chocolate covered strawberries that looked like cute little carrots. I bought all of the ingredients and was so dang excited to make them, but when I got to making them… they sure as heck were not coming out as cute as I had expected. Something about me, that I’ve probably mentioned before, is that I am quite the perfectionist. This does not serve me very well, because I also have this thing where if I’m not able to do something perfectly, I just… don’t do it. I have this expectation of myself that I should be able to do something for the first time absolutely perfectly, which never is the case. I get embarrassed so easily and when I think there’s a situation where I could end up being embarrassed, I want to avoid it at all costs.

It’s not a good thing, because I don’t ever want to leave my comfort zone and as you know, not much growth happens inside of our comfort zone. Being embarrassed is natural, we can’t always be perfect at everything. Which may sound super obvious, but it’s something that I struggle with a lot. I want to be good at everything and when I’m not automatically perfect at something, I don’t want to do it. I’ve talked in previous blogs about how there isn’t as much fear if you consciously choose not to do something, because you can tell yourself, “Well, if I wanted to try and do this, I probably could.”, but at the end of the day, you really don’t know what would happen or how good you would or wouldn’t be at something.

I think that Pinterest DIY’s are a good example to use for many reasons. The first one being something that I hadn’t really even though about, until Bobby brought it to my attention in the midst of my Easter meltdown. The fact that a lot of things on Pinterest are probably edited in such a way to make them look perfect. Which isn’t to discredit the hard work the creators put into their craft, I merely want to point out something that we all probably know on a deep level, but forget about it when consuming online media. This applies also to social media in general, whether it be a Pinterest DIY, an Instagram influencer’s life, or maybe even a Youtuber’s romantic relationship. It’s so easy for us to consume this media and let it influence us in a negative way. We think that we can’t create or express ourselves because we won’t be as smart, as pretty, or as famous as other people. Which puts us into a box that restricts us from getting better at things, because we worry that we won’t be able to do it perfectly.

Another thing that I’ve said before in previous blogs is that sometimes we need to look at the big picture of things, instead of getting too focused on the little things. For this, I was so concerned with how this dessert ended up that I was forgetting how excited I was to see all these people that are so dear to me, I was only thinking about this Pinterest DIY. In my head, Easter was dependent on the outcome of it. Which I can go ahead and say was not the case at all. It’s so easy to look back on myself and think about how silly it is that I was so flustered about this, but Sunday morning, this was SO important. The mean part of my brain was telling me that if it turned out poorly nobody would like me and I was a failure and that I would never be good at anything. What the heck! All because of a Pinterest DIY! These mean and silly thoughts are only amplified when it comes to other things, such as school or work.

I wish I could say that I have advice for these feelings, but I’m still trying to figure out how to manage them myself. I suppose the biggest piece of advice I can offer is to practice, practice, practice, even if you feel embarrassed, or stupid, or like you won’t ever be good at anything. As hard as it is, that’s really the only way that you can learn to be better at things.   It does not benefit you if you only give yourself one little chance to be good at something. You’re restricting yourself and making it a given that you will never get any better at something. It’s much better to try your best at something several times and decide that you don’t enjoy it than spend your life wondering if you would enjoy it and maybe even be really good at it. I think it’s okay to enjoy doing things that we’re not really great it, but I don’t think it’s okay to try something once and decide we’re never going to do it again. And as for most of my blogs, if not all of them, this is mainly a big ol’ note to self.

I like sharing my struggles and experiences with the world on the off-chance it speaks to at least one person. Blogging is something that is a combination of things that I feel confident and also scared about. And the things I’m confident in or not confident in change day by day. I love writing and generally think I’m a decent writer, but some days I convince myself that I’ve never written anything good in my life. Putting myself out there on the internet is scary, I worry that people think I’m silly for trying to pursue blogging, but the other part of me loves it so much that I don’t want to stop, even if someone were to think it’s odd. I guess that the fear we feel sometimes is worth it when we’re able to find the things that we’re truly passionate in.

Thanks so much for reading!

XOXO,

Mattie Mae