Have you ever done something that was so unusual and different that you didn’t know how to react to the situation, purely because you’ve never seen how it should be reacted to?

by Ann Skelly of blANNd

Brown hair, sunlight, bright photo, excellent shot outside with the sun, beautiful smile of a girl, woman's genuine smile, teeth showing in the smile

Photo from Haley Neal’s flickr

Sometimes I react to things in such ways because that’s how the character in the movie reacted. That’s how the fictional person in the book reacted. That’s how normal people react. But when faced with completely new experiences and situations you end up not knowing how you should act, you end up not putting everything you can into opportunities because you’re too busy second guessing yourself and trying to remember if you’ve read about this somewhere.

The best thing to do with everything and anything, is everything and anything you can, with everything and anything you have. I learned this from winning a competition last year, but I was too busy trying to act how I thought I should be rather than having fun and making the most of it. Now I watch the videos of me on YouTube and I cringe. Partly because I know I could’ve done so much better, and partly because I know that my hair wasn’t how I thought it looked. Damn.

It’s better to do more than less, is probably the moral of these few paragraphs. Or it could be to experience opportunities without fear of looking stupid. For me, it’s both. I know now that I should embrace looking stupid because someone’s always going to think you are anyway. There’s no point in trying to please everybody otherwise you just disappoint yourself and you miss out. Don’t mind others and do what you want, how you want.

I’m Ann Skelly, retired Anantara’s 2011 Elephant Polo Reporter, currently an Irish teenager. I like to write about things.