Have you ever tried to make a recipe on Pinterest?
They always look so deceivingly simple - until you roll up your sleeves and try them.
This week I tried to make an avocado spring roll recipe. It seemed simple enough. Buy the ingredients. Follow the steps. Easy enough, right?
Wrong.
3 hours after starting, I was staring at a hideous mess of fried goop, wondering where I had gone wrong.
I threw the whole batch out, mourning my failure in a series of comedic Instagram stories. In reality, I was bummed. I wanted to be a good cook - and this seemed like proof that I wasn't.
That's the lie fear tells. Fear tells you that you are what you repeatedly do - and if that's fail, well then you must be a failure.
I've struggled with a fear of needles since I was really little.
I experience crippling anxiety before going to the doctor and for hours afterwards. I'm rendered useless at the thought of a needle, paralyzed by my own irrational terror.
I'm 22 now, and I still have this massive fear. So when my doctor told me last Friday that I needed a blood test, I freaked out. I spent the rest of the day in a cold sweat. I could barely go on the air when the time came, because I was utterly overcome by fear and anxiety.
Walking into the lab the next day felt like walking towards my own execution. But I did it - I got my blood drawn by myself. I survived. My fear lost its weight.
A new year looms before us, and if you're anything like me, looking ahead can make you fearful.
Pause. Take a minute and look back. Look at all you've walked through - look at the ways you fumbled and got up again, the times you learned from your mistakes to become the person you are today.
I tend to look at life like a scoreboard. The more points I lose throughout the day - the more ways I fail to live up to my own unrealistic expectations for myself - the harder it is to keep going. When I'm not perfect, I'm not successful. At least that's what I start to believe.
But it's a lie. Pinterest's level of perfection exists only on Pinterest. Sometimes you make your avocado egg rolls with vegetable oil instead of canola oil and everything goes crazy.
Every time you make a mistake and choose to let it teach you, not defeat you - you're getting better. You're growing.
You don't grow without messing up. You can't improve without first experiencing crushing defeat.
Looking back on my first year out of college and my first year at NGEN, I see so many massive blunders and lessons learned. Mistakes that I made that I won't make again. This is what triumph feels like: falling down so many times you finally learn the way to succeed.
-Angela
About Angela
A self-proclaimed "overdramatic weirdo," Angela loves connecting with people (and often embarrassing herself) live on the radio. Some call her a hipster. Others just don't know what to call her. She is recent graduate of Cedarville University with a degree in Broadcasting and background in music business. All it takes is a mention of music, coffee or traveling to get her excited.