This is just a short story about a boy who failed to believe.
Throughout the semester I have failed as a writer; not in the words I wrote but in the words I failed to write, and in the work I have failed to criticize effectively. Writing as a practice is tricky, especially when criticized. But in order to improve in the discipline, or any discipline for the matter, criticism is necessary whether it be for yourself or others. However, criticism is merely criticism at best if one does not take it in effectively and practice that itself. With that I propose the thought that criticism as a practice is the most important discipline of all, especially when it involves criticizing oneself.
In several aspects of the course, I failed to pull through as a writer. I failed to manage my time and pace my blog posts. I failed to work on my writing and editing of my paper in a constructive manner. I failed to meet deadlines or complete assignments that I should have been able to. Most of all, I failed in the practice of taking criticism positively, while even failing to give criticism to others as well as I could have. After experiencing all this, it brought up the question we all ask ourselves at some point, “Why am I doing this?”. It not only affected me in a way where I had to ask myself how to do better, but what is essential to truly improving and reaching success. What am I doing wrong? How could I do better? How could I use criticism I have received to get me to move forward? These are the questions that took me a whole lot longer than it should have to answer, all due to the way I ultimately criticized myself after each failure.
Criticism comes to everyone in many way, and through different facets. We could be criticized by our peers, our professors, or ourselves. But none of it really matters if we do not use what was said in the right way. During the semester, there have been several cases of constructive criticism being given. Regarding blog posts, I received feedback from Professor McCoy about how I could improve my posts. Both in terms of writing, and connecting it to another work that I may have drawn ideas from, I had more to work with so that I may take steps to create better blog posts. On top of this, peers have given me so much inspiration and help when we have talked and shared ideas in class. But despite these cases that could and should have helped me to further improve my work, I still managed to fail in such practices. I asked myself why, what was I missing? I figured it out, my mindset.
Having the right mindset is key to mastering any practice, especially regarding self criticism. My mindset has always been fixed, something I have addressed and talked about in a previous blog post. A fixed mindset that simply does not take failure as a something to learn from. A growth mindset, however, is something to strive for. But when it comes to mindset, it’s less important to think about how to get there, it’s the ability to believe that it will happen. With that belief, will come the will to take action and move forward to actually practice and improve on the discipline. If you don’t believe you can improve, then you will hinder yourself from doing so. You will stop, and shut down, all due to believing that you can’t improve after failure. You will do just as I did. Failing, and then not take a single step to get better.
So if there is anything I want anyone to take away from this last, incomplete work of mine it is this: believe in yourself more. Believe in your ability to improve, and the rest will fall into place. If one has that solid foundation, that core belief, then the concrete steps you can and will take to improving a practice or discipline will come naturally. The ability to take criticism in and actually apply it will slowly become easier. It is easier to say than do, but it starts with oneself. I failed to believe in myself after each failure, and it only made it worse. That’s why I will start to by ending this semester’s writing with this sentence. I will improve and do better next time.