this is something i'm reflecting on partially b/c of what i posted yesterday about getting over my insecurity about my programming abilities but also something i see people do in fighting game communities all the time.
"i'm so bad at this game. all i'm ever going to do is fail. my win rate is in the toilet. i can't get better. i fail at this like i fail at everything else. here, look at this, here's proof that i can't get better. laugh at me."
now i know that some of this is just straight up rooted in other stuff (and if we'll be real, other trauma, but that's not my thing to dig into here) that's unrelated to the actual game/activity, and that's tough. like, living is tough. i have sympathy for that. i will never tell you you're not allowed to feel frustrated about not getting better about something or that you're not allowed to feel a way about getting stuck.
but you have to remember that literally everyone starts out being "bad" (quotes there because to be honest? there is nothing flawed about being unskilled at something you're just learning how to do). the best in the world at music, art, whatever, weren't born the best in the world. they put in the work, and for each of them that time and that work looks different.
if people laugh at you about these things, then that's a them problem, not a you problem. you have to let go of destroying yourself pre-emptively to stop other people from doing it to you, especially if people aren't interested in destroying you and want to try to help you out instead--the more you insist that you're garbage to someone who is actively complimenting you or trying to help you, the more you're destroying yourself for nothing.
there's someone i used to know who was pretty much the epitome of this. i maintain they could've been a great fighting game player (not even like, competitively. just in general) if that was their interest but they 1) didn't want to really listen to the things I was advising or check the specific things I pointed to when they asked a specific question and 2) any time they couldn't do a thing they wanted to do they immediately spiraled into blaming the game for dropping their inputs, then themselves, saying they just couldn't do it.
like. stuff is hard. failing is part of it. it sucks, yeah. but it literally happens to everyone. it looks different for different people, but everyone fails. everyone has moments where they can't do a DP or can't figure out neutral in a fighting game or mess up an input or a block or get stuck while programming something.
it happens to everyone. it is ok. don't destroy yourself to stop other people from doing it. it's a marathon, not a sprint. take your time.
but an important addendum to it:
stop discrediting the things you did do by saying it was just luck or that you only got away with it because someone else was careless.
maybe that's true. maybe that's not. but it doesn't matter because at the end of the day you carried through when it counted.
even if you're making mistakes, it's important to acknowledge what you know and what you managed to do right. people gassing you up for the things you have done right isn't them trying to fluff your ego just to set you up for a fall--they're trying to be honest with you about the cool things you did. while it is helpful to hear "the honest truth" about how you're doing in something sometimes, you have to counterbalance that with also acknowledging what you did right.
you are the first person to defeat yourself if you can't do that.
