Whatever you’ll cringe at in five years is proof you were brave enough to try it now.

Cringe is the feeling of having grown, experienced backwards. It exists only because you can now see what you could not see then, which means the embarrassing version was doing the necessary work at the time. People who never wince at their past efforts have usually made very few of them. The discomfort is a receipt.

When an old attempt makes you flinch, let it, then name specifically what you know now that you did not know then. Thank the earlier version briefly, and go make the thing you will wince at five years from here.