Dare to be Awesome

You know, I just thought of something a couple of days ago, and now I think it's worth sharing, even if it has nothing at all to do with gospel, scriptures, or anything else you read this blog for. I call the concept Dare to be Awesome.

Picture this: You're going to make an attempt to do something easy, like brushing your teeth. Can you brush your teeth? Can you remember to? Can you manage it? Of course you can. It's easy. Anyone can do that. But what if you can't? What if you forget? What if you lack the strength or will-power to brush your teeth? That's not a good thing. That means that you failed to do something that anybody can do. Successfully brushing your teeth won't give you much of a feeling of accomplishment, because it wasn't really much of an accomplishment, but failing to brush your teeth, once you've decided that you would, can give you a feeling of failure.

Okay, now try this: Try to do something hard. This could be mentally hard, like solving a Rubik's cube, or physically hard, like walking/jogging/running a certain distance, or hard to will yourself to do. Can you do it? Well, maybe. Not just anyone can solve a Rubik's cube or walk/run/jog very far. But that's the point. Try to do something difficult, something that not just anyone can do. If you can do it, that's awesome! You're more skilled in that thing than the average person, or than you were the last time you tried. But if you fail, that's okay. It was a pretty lofty goal. Failing to do something especially difficult isn't something to be ashamed of.

Here are the two scenarios in a nutshell:

Easy + Succeed = Normal. Easy + Fail = Lame.
Hard + Succeed = Awesome. Hard + Fail = Normal.

Here's my point: I have poor self-esteem. I don't have much confidence in myself, so I usually only try to do things that I know I can do, thinking that repeated (easy) success would boost my confidence. However, even with that plan, I sometimes fail, and then I feel even less competent than I felt before. And when I do succeed, it's no big deal. What I was trying to do was easy.

On the other hand, if I really challenge myself, if I try to do things that I'm not sure I can do, I have a better chance of improving my self-image, or at least maintaining the status quo. Because if I fail when I'm trying to do something especially difficult, that's not really too surprising or devastating. But if I succeed in doing something difficult, then that's awesome, and it means I'm awesome, because I can do difficult things.

So, in the future, I'm going to try to challenge myself. I'll set goals for myself that I know I may not reach, because then, if I do reach that goal, I will have done something great, something that I can be proud of. I will have been awesome.