The sign that you're about to improve Have you ever gone through a period when everything you were doing felt like garbage to you? If so, let me tell you what that means. Years ago, a friend of mine told me that, every so often, she starts to hate everything she's drawing.  Everything she draws looks ugly to her. She started to notice that, whenever that happened, she could take a break for awhile and go back to it, and she'd find she liked everything she was drawing again.  But what if she kept going? Well, then one day, suddenly, with no warning at all, she would make a tremendous leap in quality. She finally figured out why that kept happening.  It was because her brain had started to notice a flaw that had always been there, and it was trying to figure out how to fix it.  By choosing to keep going, she was telling her unconscious mind to keep doing that. Frustration isn't always bad. Frustration can be a sign that you're learning. Nobody likes frustration.  Nobody likes feeling like they're going through a slump.  But if you feel that way, it's not a bad sign.  In fact, it's usually a very good sign.  It's a sign that you're about to improve. Is the process comfortable? No, of course not. It's not always fast, either.  Some flaws take a lot of work to figure out how to overcome. But it's always worth it. On the other side of greater knowledge is always greater joy.