Episode 13: Not Good Enough?

Welcome to the ScrapHappier Podcast, where we share quick tips, tricks, and techniques to help you create scrapbooks you love and be happier while doing it. I’m your host, Alice Boll.

Thanks for joining me for episode number 13. Before we dive into today’s topic, would you take a moment and just hit that little five star button to give me a rating on the podcast? I’d super appreciate it.

Last week, we were talking all about self-discipline, but I’d like to dive into another topic today; feeling inadequate, feeling like you’re not enough and you’re not good enough. I know this can hit us in many different ways and in many different aspects of our life, but today we’re going to focus just on the scrapbooking.

I’ll start just by letting you know, I’m not some kind of doctor and I don’t have any special work experience in this, but I’ll share my personal experience with feeling inadequate and I’ll tell you what I’ve done to help me, to help me get past that, so that I can get back to scrapbooking and making pages that I love.

So first I want to start by saying everyone has self doubts. Everybody compares themselves to other people at some point, and has a little bit of doubt, whether it’s put on you by other people or by society, or if it’s self-inflicted, which for lots of us, it is. We all suffer from having a little bit of self doubt from time to time and sometimes we have a lot of self doubt from time to time, but it’s how we handle it and how we move forward from this that really changes our experience.

And, yeah, it’s true. We can think that other people are smarter or more talented or more artistic or better at journaling, or they have better pictures, or their family is just dang cute. And all of those things can actually be true, but sometimes they’re not. Sometimes we almost have imposter syndrome, like we’re scrapbooking, but because we don’t do it as well, or just like somebody else, maybe we’re not scrapbooking often enough. Whatever that thing that is making you feel insecure, can make you feel like, are you even a real scrapbooker? Are you good enough to be a scrapbooker?

But here’s what I truly think. If you think that you’re a scrapbooker, then you’re a scrapbooker. Whether you do a little bit or a lot, whether you make fancy pages or really simple pages, or whether you’re somewhere in between. If you want to be a scrapbooker, you can be a scrapbooker and you can be right. You might not have the skills that someone else has and that’s okay because there’s a magical little word that you need to know and use all the time; yet. Because when it comes down to it, you just don’t have that skill, yet. You can learn it. You can take a class. You can learn new skills. You can develop your photography. You can learn some new journaling techniques. You can learn some new artistic techniques. So really the big question is, what have you not learned yet, that you need to learn?

And if we’ve hung out online in any kind of live training or live session, I guarantee that you’ve heard me use that phrase. “Well, I don’t know how to do this yet.” Or, “I haven’t done that, yet.” And I use this word a lot and I think it is a really good way to admit that you don’t have that skill, but you can learn it.

So here’s the thing to figure out. What looks fun to you? Why don’t you try it? It’s okay to be bad at something. Yep. That’s what I really said. It’s okay to be bad at something. Most people actually suck at things when they try them for the first time. You can tell yourself, “I’m going to try this.” And it might be bad, but it might not be and I think that there’s no place in our life that’s actually easier to do this, to try different things and to try it and fail or to try and succeed or to try it and kind of be somewhere in the middle, then in scrapbooking.

Because when it comes down to it, what are we playing with? Paper. It’s just paper or maybe it’s digi scrapbooking and then you have that magical undo button. But say you’re working with paper. Paper is relatively inexpensive. Okay, not scrapbook paper necessarily, but some of it is. But it’s relatively inexpensive and if it’s bad and if you mess it up or you don’t like what you make, you can literally throw it out and start again.

If you’re worried about testing a new technique on a big scrapbook page and then being unhappy with it, try out new techniques on cards. I personally think that is the best way to learn a new technique is to test it out, try it on a card before you adapt it and use it on a scrapbook page. Cards are great. If you make a great card, then you’ll be happy and you can send that to someone. If you make an okay card, then you’ll be able to send that to someone too. And if you make a bad card, well, either you send it or you throw it in the trash. It’s not that complicated.

Another thing that I really encourage you to try, if you’re feeling inadequate, like you’re just not creating things that are good enough, is to find some different sources of inspiration. You need to see some different styles and some different techniques, some different ways of scrapbooking. You need to look at how other people scrapbook and I’m not talking about the designers or the people on design teams.

When people are creating for design teams or their designers, they are not working with bad pictures. I guarantee it. They are not working with kids that didn’t sit still, taking pictures in the dark. They have the ability to spend $20 on the layout. They don’t have to hurry up and get their page done because they got to run off and do the dishes. They have hours to create a project and most pages, created by designers, don’t actually have any journaling on them. And that’s okay because their goal is totally different. Their goal is to show you the great ways that you can use these amazing scrapbook products.

But, as a real life scrapbooker, we have problems. We have bad photos. We take pictures in the dark. We take pictures of kids that don’t sit still. We don’t have a giant budget. We don’t necessarily have hours to create a page. And we actually have journaling to put on that page. So when we look at inspiration, it’s a lot better when we can actually see a little bit of inspiration that really relates to the pages that we really want to create.

So next time you’re cataloging all the beautiful layouts that you’d like to be inspired by on Pinterest, make sure you throw a few pages in that inspiration, where the photos aren’t perfect or where they actually have journaling on the page. So that when you’re looking for examples to compare your own work to, you actually get real examples that are comparable to the pages that you’ll create.

It reminds me of this quote, that’s credited to Albert Einstein. “Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

So when you look at pages that you’re really inspired by, make sure that the kind of page that you would actually want to create. And then when you sit down to create, I’m going to suggest something. Give yourself a little pep talk. Acknowledge the good stuff that you’re doing. If you make a good page, give yourself a little pat on the back. Go ahead and say it out loud. “This page looks really good.”

When you finish a project, say, “Good job me,” and I know this sounds silly but the more you do it, give yourself that little pat on the back, like actually do it. Reach over and pat yourself on the back or cheer yourself on and clap and apply yourself. And just because it sounds silly doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work because it’s really nice to get a little bit of credit for the stuff that you make, even if that credit is coming from you.

I’ll totally confess. I am great at those. I celebrate my wins. When I make a page that has a really cool technique or I did something kind of fun and awesome on it, I go ahead and I have a little dance party. It’s like, “Go Alice. Go Alice. You’re so awesome. Make the scrapbook.”

Okay. So even if this isn’t your thing, I encourage you to just give it a try, but maybe it’s not your thing. The thing you can do is be generous to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Give yourself the credit that you would give to somebody else. If you saw that great page that they made, you’d be like, “Good job, girl.” It is totally okay to be proud of yourself for a job well done.

And here’s the thing. Do your best, most of the time. Some pages aren’t going to be a work of art and that’s okay. I don’t know if you know this, but some of the most famous artists that we celebrate in our world have made bad paintings. That’s right. Not every Monet is a masterpiece and the same thing can apply to our scrapbooks. Not every page is going to be the best page ever and that’s totally okay. It’s kind of real and you should just expect it.

But here’s the best quote that I heard from a friend recently. “Strive for excellence, not perfection. Perfection, isn’t real.” We can strive to make great scrapbook pages and yeah, some of them might not be, but that’s okay. We can keep trying and we can enjoy it as we do it. So here’s your prompt of the day. Scrapbook about something that you enjoy, even if you’re not good at it, because sometimes it really is about enjoying it and having fun.

Here’s our tip of the day. Use the word yet, especially when talking about something that you can’t do, yet. If you make a page inspired by today’s prompt, or you’d like to talk about our tip of the day or this entire episode, you can find me on Instagram at Alice Boll.

You’ll also find a link to the show notes at ScrapHappy.org/episode13. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the ScrapHappier Podcast. If you like what you hear, please consider leaving me a review. They really do help. Or even better, tell a friend about the podcast, or even show them how to access the podcast. I hope that this episode really does help you ScrapHappier and make pages that you love. Happy scrapping.