What happens when you stop trying to be good at things

I'm sitting in a print-making studio in Valencia, surrounded by seven other people carefully working on their prints. The old me - let's call him Mat 1.0 - would have been sneaking glances at everyone else's work, mentally ranking mine against theirs, quietly panicking if someone else's looked better.

But that's not what's happening. I'm just... playing. Experimenting with textures. Trying weird colour combinations. Having fun. And weirdly, the prints I'm making are probably the best work I've done in years.

Something's shifted in how I approach new experiences, and it's changed everything.

The problem with winning

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I've always been very competitive. If I'm honest, it's been a problem at some points in my life. When I was younger, there were certain things that I would actively avoid because I knew that I wasn't very good at them, and I really hated to lose. I hated sports at school as a kid. I never enjoyed team sports because I couldn't directly control the outcome.

Think about that for a second. I was avoiding entire categories of human experience because I might not excel at them.

Trying to be less competitive is something I've been working on for a long time. I feel that in the last five years I've definitely grown out of a desire to win all the time, but I've recently been working on changing my philosophy completely - from a succeed/fail mindset to one that's based more on whether I'm enjoying something or not.

It sounds simple when I put it like that. It's not.

The shift

Before, I might try out a new hobby - knitting or geli print or crochet - and judge myself based on whether I'm good at it. Succeed or fail. Although there's definitely a part of my brain that still thinks like this, and tells me that I'm no good at whatever, I'm learning to label that thought as unhelpful and move on with my life.

I'm trying to think of it now in terms of "am I enjoying this activity" instead of "am I good at this activity", which feels much more healthy.

That print-making course I mentioned? I love learning new skills, especially in the artistic and creative realm, and the tutor seemed really good. The class size was 6-8 people most weeks, and I think that might have put me off in the past because I would have been judging the quality of my prints based on what other people in the class were doing.

But now with this new mindset, I felt able to go along, play with some materials and techniques, and not worry too much about whether I was doing it well. The focus was definitely on the fun/creative/play aspect of the course, rather than the final output. And coincidentally I think this actually improved the quality of my prints, because I was just having fun instead of trying to make something saleable or high quality.

Relaxing into that play mode allowed me to experiment more, try out some unusual things, and I really loved the prints that I made. But at no point did I find myself judging my work against that of my classmates and wondering whether mine was better or worse than theirs, which is definitely something I would have done even a year ago.

When the old thinking kicks in hard

Last year Kat and I gave ourselves a scuba diving course as a wedding anniversary gift.

It seems like we're falling into a pattern of adventure sports as anniversary presents. In 2024 we hiked around Mont Blanc to celebrate 25 years of marriage, and this summer we're going to be cycling from Spain to Turkey on our anniversary (more info here).

Scuba diving is something that I've always been interested to try, but I know it's hard to learn and I feel like it's something that I wouldn't have tried in the past because it's a group activity where I would be comparing my progress to other people's.

The first day was really hard. Very low visibility, a huge amount to learn, and I found breathing underwater quite a high stress environment. The first task the instructors gave us was to take off our masks, replace them and breathe out through our noses to clear the water out. I've no idea why this was the first task we did, as it was easily the hardest thing we learned on the entire course.

Some people got it straight away. Others - including me - needed more practice.

The instructors split us into two groups. The fast learners went off to do the other skills, and the slow group (me and Kat) stayed to practice this skill over and over.

The old succeed/fail thinking really kicked in here, and I had to deliberately calm myself, remind myself that I'm not failing anything, it's just taking me a bit longer to learn. But that old part of my brain was really telling me that I should be winning here, which I found very unhelpful.

My brain and I have a complex relationship sometimes.

What it feels like now

I'm not saying that I'm totally cured of my competitive streak, or that I've transformed my thinking overnight. As with any change in mindset, it takes a long time, and there are good days and bad days.

These days, doing something new still brings a little bit of "hey, what if you're no good at this" or "maybe you should spend hours reading up on this skill before you start" thinking. But with practice I'm getting much better at noticing this, labelling it and ignoring it. There's still a bit of adrenaline each time I do something new, and there's still quite a lot of mental celebration when I "do well" at something new. I don't think that's ever going to go away, and it's fine to some degree.

But what I'm not doing is judging myself by the old succeed/fail criteria. I'm much better at reflecting on something new and deciding whether I enjoyed it or not. And then either doing it again if I enjoyed it, or picking another item from my very long wish list to try out next.

The bigger picture

I feel like I'm on a constant voyage of self-discovery and self-understanding. I turned 50 last year, and I'm having the time of my life right now. I've never been happier, fitter, healthier.

Part of that is self-acceptance too, and for me that's come with age. As I get older I have a much clearer understanding of what I want, and I'm not afraid to go get it. So this enjoy/not enjoy mindset is part of a much larger transition that's going on in my life right now, mainly focused on caring less what other people think and just doing the things I want to do.

The irony isn't lost on me that by caring less about being good at things, I'm actually getting better at them. Or maybe I'm not - maybe my prints are objectively terrible and I just don't care anymore. Either way, I'm enjoying myself more, trying more things, and living a fuller life.

And that feels like winning, even though I've stopped keeping score.