When I took painting lessons (art not house) the instructor warned us there would be an ugly phase when we would just hate our painting. He reminded us not to give up on it, but not keep going then and ruin it. So I would take a break, go for a walk, and come back to it later. Most of the time I ended up with something I was pleased with.

There was one painting I remember as “The Broccoli” that I threw out eventually. Maybe I kept going when I should have stopped. The assignment was to draw the silhouette of a shadow and paint it in contrasting colors. The green part of my image looked like a head of broccoli against a red background. I don’t even remember what the object was that I traced. For my next attempt, I traced the outline of a plant and painted it yellow and purple. It turned out to be one of my favorite paintings from the class.

I imagine this could be applied to life. Are you on the borderline of the ugly phase of something? In the middle of it? Can you step away?