Giving Up Before You’ve Tried

My best friend and I play various daily games—word games, geography games, movies and music games. As I’ve written before, in general, I’m better at the geography games and he’s better at the movies and music. Because of this, and because I don’t like being bad at things, I will often fly through the latter games under the assumption of not knowing it anyway.

To be a bit more specific, Framed, the movie game, shows you six still frames from a movie, one at a time, and you have to guess what the movie is. The frames get progressively more obvious as you go (so if the movie is Toy Story, by the sixth frame you’re seeing Buzz and Woody). 

If I’m in a patient mood (rare) I will sometimes zoom in on the early images, looking for clues on what the movie could be. But more often than not, I skip through, assuming I won’t know it, and only start noticing toward the end, when it is either dreadfully clear it’s a long time favorite or apparent that I have never heard of it. 

Recently, the movie was Superman and the third image showed a Daily Planet newspaper. Now I don’t claim to know Superman or the DC universe very well. But, I know without hesitation that the Daily Planet goes with Superman and had I taken a more than .2 second pause, I could have made that guess 3 guesses sooner. When the final or penultimate slide pulled up Superman himself (or something else devastatingly obvious), and after I’d gone back to review the other slides, I felt silly for rushing.

But why was I rushing? Not because I was in any inherent hurry, but because when I opened the webpage, I assumed I wouldn’t know it. I assumed I wouldn’t know the answer and therefore why waste my time. And while of course I have a much lower win rate than my friend, I still know things and I’m still worth a shot. 

If I’m in the habit of quitting before I’ve begun—even for something as simple as a silly daily media game—what else am I willing to disregard? 

Perhaps then this can serve as a reminder to pull back a hair. To pay deeper attention. To give myself a chance to get it right. To try knowing that I still might not know and that I still might metaphorically lose but gosh won’t that be better than not trying at all?

If you tell yourself you’re not good at it, you’re never going to give yourself a chance to try. 

This week, we invite you to reframe. Give yourself a chance to figure it out. Be unafraid to try, regardless of outcome. Be bold in pursuit of winning. Be bold in pursuit of yourself.