THE WAYS I LIMIT MYSELF
Drawing Parallels and Making Notes to Self
Written by Christian Bethany Felix. Illustrated by Amira Hanisah.
As I sit down to write this article, jitterily, I tell myself, You're doing it again. That thing where you get all worked up about making something instead of just feeling good about it. You need to stop getting in your own way.
And then I think, Oh. That's something.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that I struggle to bring myself to write much more than I used to. I remember having the discipline, as a primary school student, to regularly get through the day’s homework and the other things I had to do so I could write stories in homework-free peace. I always had the impression that as an adult I would write stories — or, more accurately, that I would have written stories. Because the thing is, like any other creative pursuit, writing is a discipline, and it takes lots of practice and work (and it’s easier to fantasise about the non-work parts). After over a decade, I still have a deep love for writing fiction, though I’ve picked up lots of other interests along the way. I’ve found that there are some parallels between how I limit myself when writing and making things, and how I approach life. You might find some of these takeaways oddly obvious, but heh, they didn’t always seem obvious to me. This is what I have learnt.
Limiting through perceptions
I think the biggest, sneakiest way I tend to limit myself is through the perspectives and approaches I adopt. When I was much younger, I tended to make a lot of unnecessary (and baseless) associations, such as thinking if I liked certain things, I couldn’t like other things, or believing I had to be a certain way. I convinced myself that other people— even strangers— were forming opinions about me and it was important that I sent them the right impression about who I was. It was contrived, and I didn’t even realise I was doing it. I tended to define myself by things I wasn’t, or the things I didn’t like, rather than being productive by focusing my energy on things I actually resonated with instead. I continuously limited myself by how I assumed others were thinking about me. This seeped into my writing, and I think it showed in terms of how flat my characters could be.
As I got older, learning to be more open-minded became somewhat inevitable and it made a huge difference. Becoming more aware and accepting of other people and the realities that existed outside my narrow perspectives made me confront and figure out what I thought and how I felt about all sorts of things, and it made me try to hold myself to the same standards. It also made me more aware that everyone’s life is as deep and as wide as mine, and that everyone’s life matters to them the way my life matters to me. Eventually, I also realised I’m going to need to care about every character I write, and make sure they all hold the same depth as individuals, even if they’re only going to a get a brief moment, or be a real pain to be around.
Another thing that made a huge difference was being kinder and gentler with the way I addressed myself in my head. I used to be incredibly harsh and quick to beat myself up to the point of toxicity. My swiftness to self-deprecate escalated to belittling my own work, which led me to doubt my abilities, and then feel bad about the things I made. The strange thing is, it’s sort of self-fulfilling — the less you practice a skill and the more out of touch you get, the more compromised your work is. Which makes you feel worse. This vicious cycle can go on and on. It’s important to realise that’s not healthy, it works against you, and you’re better off being decent to yourself and choosing to keep making the things you care about. Now, when I make a mistake, I think "You Know Better Now, So Do Better Next Time," instead of, "You Worthless Fool You Will Never Achieve Anything," and that really does the trick.
Finally, I surprised myself by actually writing a few songs on the guitar after convincing myself for years that I couldn’t because I Was A Piano Person (whatever that means). While there’s still a lot I don’t know about the guitar, I’m glad I messed around with it enough to enjoy it and come up with some things. A lot of times I tell myself I don’t know enough about something to attempt it, and I tend to want to be good at things immediately. In doing so, I get in my way and deprive myself of the simple joy of Just Trying And Seeing How It Goes, and I refuse to be realistic about how many failed attempts it takes before becoming good at something. It’s odd to think that if I didn’t give it a try, I might have never come up with those specific songs.
You don’t have to limit yourself, make yourself feel bad as some wacky method of self-improvement, or assume that you can’t get better at something just because of past experience. It’s important to be aware that you’re capable of changing your perceptions — about your expectations, about how people are, how things should be, about yourself, and about what’s possible.
Limitations that restrict
As you now know, I had a tendency of defining myself quite rigidly. For someone who (on the surface) criticised Society’s Stereotypes, I’d gotten myself to fit into a small box of my own and told myself that was just how I was. I made the mistake of defining myself rigidly, and I’d restricted myself by holding myself and others to pedestals.
Maybe I was so eager to define myself because I thought it was one way to solve figuring myself out. But like so much of life, figuring out who you are (or your art style, or your voice) is a journey, and you’re allowed — expected, even — to grow and change. You get better by learning, and you learn by doing. I had the bad habit of waiting until I had everything ready before I started working on a project, which was not the best of approaches, and led to starting much later than I could have. It’s a lot more realistic to just start, and then naturally tangent off to deal with specific issues as they show up, rather than trying to get everything ready on your first try and micromanaging yourself into some sort of meta-spiral.
I used to think perfectionism was a good thing, until I ended up making less and less things as a result of being afraid to mess them up somehow. I put so many blocks in front of myself because I didn’t want to fail by my weird standards, not realising that I was getting in the way of my improvement. To some extent, I also exhibited this sort of behaviour by being extremely nervous in public, hoping that I wasn’t somehow making a fool of myself by just existing around other people.
It was a blessing, learning how to be more mindful of the present. It helped me pay attention to my surroundings and observe them (which I loved to do, and which helped greatly with picking up on things to write about or get inspired by) without being terrified by them as I usually would. I learnt to pay attention to what I was doing, instead of imagining what strangers were thinking of me. And this is another thing — a lot of the time, probably nobody was actually micro-scrutinising me, because (1) unfortunately they may have been micro-scrutinising themselves, or (2) why would they want to waste time and energy worrying about what I was doing when they had things to do, anyway? Over time I came to realise I’d been getting worked up over things I’d imagined, and soon enough a much more helpful cycle ensued, of being focused on what I was doing, and feeling better, and being more functional and observant.
As someone who tends to be generally skeptical about the rules and structures that exist, I realised that I’d fallen into routines when it would have been much better to come up with intentional ones. If you’re unhappy with the way something is, try and change it — it’s unlikely to go away by itself. It’s important to get out of unintentional routines, or you’ll find yourself continuously unhappy and feeling stuck. Make small changes you’ve been meaning to but just haven’t — take the scenic route, give yourself some space to breathe, reach out and make time for the people you care about, kick a bad habit, work on that project. Realise that rules and structures are largely constructed to help people and provide order — if the rules and structures you regularly encounter in your life are becoming oppressive, consider how you can change them so that you live in a way that allows you to get more out of them.
Holding people to pedestals tends to do them the disservice of not acknowledging their humanity, by seeing them as a two-dimensional version of who they are. I think in my experience, it also created a sort of distance between myself and what I felt was achievable. I would get intimidated and think, Oh man, this is what excellent writing is, or this person is some next-level artist, and then feel discouraged about my work in relation to theirs. On one hand, it’s unreasonable to compare yourself, a person finding their footing, to someone who has dedicated decades to their craft. And on the other, they have dedicated decades to their craft. They put in the work to get there. Even though they are masters at their craft, they’re still human beings, after all. And you’re a human being, too. And that means having the freedom to dream and go after things at full speed.
Whether it was limiting myself with rigid definitions, by putting unnecessary mental blocks before me, or by pedestalling people, it was helpful to be able to be honest with myself and admit what I was doing. I think refusing to admit certain flaws or tendencies about myself was limiting in some ways, too — it stopped me from addressing them and improving.
Limitations that help
Sometimes, limitations can be useful when you apply them intentionally. For example, it can be daunting to be asked to write a story about anything, but having limitations such as knowing your audience, or having a theme to write about make the task a lot more approachable. It helps to have an idea of what you’re working with.
Some limitations may serve as a reminder to challenge ourselves and strive for better, whether it’s facing a fear, pushing ourselves to achieve goals or confronting lingering flaws in the systems that surround us. Certain limitations, like responsibilities, may feel challenging and frustrating at first — but we all know they carry weight and mould us in the long term, and they help define us. I used to think that certain responsibilities were holding me back from discovering myself. But those responsibilities helped me figure out who I was through accepting them, rather than despite them. They provided focus.
Similarly, you can get better focus by defining yourself — not the same rigid definitions that limit you, but rather intentionally chosen aspects to help anchor yourself — by thinking about what matters to you, what you’re aiming for, and the sort of person you want to be.
Closing remarks
These are some of the limitations I’ve engaged with, and I continue to remind myself to apply the things I’ve learnt from them — it's an ongoing practice. Before I end this article, I’d like to share a quote from a commencement speech by Neil Gaiman at The University of the Arts in 2012, which certainly resonates with people beyond the arts. It’s also known as the Make Good Art speech — and I highly recommend listening to it.
“When you start out on a career in the arts, you have no idea what you’re doing. This is great. People who know what they’re doing know the rules, and they know what is possible and what is impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them, and you can. If you don’t know it’s impossible, it’s easier to do.”
May your jitters never hold you back.
B.
Christian Bethany Felix is a 23 year-old Malaysian editor who loves reading, writing, music, painting, and animation, among other things. (Which sounds vague, for which she apologises. Her preferences really are all over the place.)
