It’s a little difficult when someone points out your flaws or points out all the little things that you do incorrectly. It hurts when someone that you care about points out your flaws or points out all the little things that you do incorrectly.

I tend to ignore the things that I’m not good at. Or I try to gloss it over. I don’t like taking on some challenges head on and trying to do better than I could potentially do. Like… Retaking a course. I dreaded it beyond belief. But, when I was done, I was happy with myself and learned that I could potentially do okay in that subject.

But it’s different when someone points out that you’re not very good at something that you’ve actually been making an effort at. It’s different when it’s someone that matters telling you that. It’s different when someone that matters is actually telling you that the effort you have made thus far makes little to no difference. It makes you question why you’re doing something, or who you’re really doing it for. It also makes you question why bother doing something if it doesn’t matter in the end. It makes you second guess yourself before your next move. It makes you try to predict someone else’s reaction and try to guess how they’re going to take something, if they will think that this time, you did okay.

It’s a slap in the face when someone does that. It draws attention to your own concerns and feelings of failure, it makes you feel like you’re not good enough and that everything that you do is… insignificant. It doesn’t matter because you… didn’t put in enough effort. Or you didn’t do it correctly. Or you’re just too inexperienced and lacking the knowledge to know what to do in the situations that you come across.

There are many things that you do in your life that will effect those around you. The things that you say, the things that you do, the actions and consequences of those actions. They do ultimately matter.

But the things that others say, the way that they make their point heard, the way they choose to react to a situation and the way that they tell you that you’re doing something that you thought was really, really right is actually just not working at all…

That matters too.