If you'd told me a year ago that I'd be tweaking DNS settings, analysing website performance scores, troubleshooting Pinterest product feeds and generally doing any of the "techy" bits of website and business building, I'd have laughed.

Yet this week, that's exactly what I've been doing, with a cup of tea in hand and Aries snoozing at my feet.

Why would I have laughed?

Because I genuinely believed I wasn't technically minded. That just wasn't how "my brain worked". I was much better at the creative side of things. The technical stuff simply wasn't within my skill set.

For a long time, if I didn't grasp something immediately, I'd assume it wasn't one of my strengths. I wasn't wired that way. It was just beyond my brain's capabilities. If someone else could do it and I couldn't, then clearly I was lacking whatever made these things click.

Looking back, I think part of that came from the conditions I was learning in. There wasn't much space to explore, make mistakes or simply be curious. If I didn't understand something straight away, it was very easy to convince myself I simply wasn't good at it.

Turns out, I wasn't lacking ability at all: I was missing the right conditions to learn.

Learning isn't just about ability

We often talk about learning as though ability is the only thing that counts.

Questions like:
-Are they motivated enough?
-Are they trying hard enough?
-Are they clever enough?

And of course those things matter.
But I think there's another piece of the puzzle that often gets forgotten. The conditions we learn in.

Where would you expect someone to learn better? In a calm, supportive environment with time, patience and the freedom to ask questions? Or in a highly pressured environment, juggling multiple responsibilities, worrying about what happens if they don't understand something immediately?

I think the answer is fairly straightforward.

Plants don't grow everywhere

If you know me in real life (or over on TikTok), you'll know gardening is my favourite hobby. I could happily talk for hours about my favourite plants, future garden plans and why everyone should grow cut flowers.

One of the biggest things gardening has taught me (and yes, I learnt this the hard way several times, sorry to the lupins I forgot to take out of the greenhouse on a 30-degree day) is that every plant needs different conditions to thrive.

-Dahlias are fussy little divas who need constant babying and protection from damp.
-Poppies prefer to be left alone to do their own thing.
-Petunias need regular feeding if you want big, beautiful blooms
.-Peonies won't flower until their third year (so don't throw the tiny shoots away after the first year like I did!).
And somehow, my neighbour managed to grow a tomato plant in a drain. (True story.)

If a plant struggles to thrive, we don't immediately declare it's a bad plant. We ask questions.
-Does it need more water?
-Less water?
-A bigger pot?
-More sunshine?
-A bit of plant food?
-Protection from pests?

We don't shout at the plant to grow faster, tell it it's rubbish and throw it away. We change the conditions. So why don't we do that for ourselves?

I thought I was a bad plant

Learning, and more specifically, how I learn best, is something I've thought about a lot since finishing my apprenticeship.

I used to think I had to understand something immediately. If I didn't "get it" the first time, I'd convince myself I just wasn't very good. Looking back, I don't think I lacked motivation or ability. I think I lacked the right conditions.

When you're balancing multiple responsibilities and constantly jumping between completely different jobs, there aren't many opportunities to stop, explore something and properly understand it. Sometimes we're shown something once and expected to remember it forever. If it doesn't click immediately, it's very easy to mistake "I haven't learnt this yet" for "I'm just not good at this."

Building my own business has helped me realise those are two very different things. Turns out I wasn't lacking motivation or ability. I just needed a little more water, a little more sunshine, and perhaps a bigger pot.

Building my website and rebuilding my confidence

When I first decided to build my own WordPress website from scratch, I was nervous. Everything looked technical before I'd even reached the homepage.

Words like DNS, caching and Core Web Vitals sounded like they belonged to "proper technical people", not someone like me.

But building and maintaining my own website has completely changed the way I think about learning. Nobody is looking over my shoulder asking why something took three hours. Nobody minds if I disappear down a PageSpeed Insights rabbit hole for an afternoon simply because I want to understand it.

I've realised learning isn't just about having enough time. It's also about having the confidence and emotional safety to be curious without feeling like every unanswered question reflects your ability. That freedom has completely changed my confidence.

Not because I suddenly know everything. Because I've started enjoying the process of figuring things out.

So many side-quests

This week started with a simple thought: "I'll just add a new product to my website." Several hours later I was...
-Optimising website performance and improving user experience by adding customer accounts, search functionality and speeding up my pages.
-Uploading, fixing and syncing my Pinterest catalogue.
-Looking at cross-selling (and figuring out how to make it look slightly less ugly).
-Working out how to create automatic discounts (before promptly panicking because I'd accidentally made every product look discounted... and then figuring out how to fix it).
-Tweaking CSS.
-Learning more about hosting and caching.
-And generally making lots of little improvements I'd never originally planned.

I hadn't intended to go on all of these side quests. What should have been an hour's job turned into a full day of tweaking, learning and solving little puzzles.

A year ago I'd have been scared to try. Scared to press the wrong button. Scared to break something.

Now? I'll press the button and if it goes wrong, I'll figure it out. Almost everything can be rolled back. Because my conditions are right, I'm no longer afraid of not knowing the answer.

I don't know everything

And that's exactly the point. The biggest thing I've learnt over the past few months isn't technical. It isn't marketing. It's that I don't have to know everything.

A year ago, I didn't know what DNS meant. I didn't know how to properly read PageSpeed Insights. I didn't know how to build a website from scratch. I didn't know how hosting worked.

Those words sounded technical, specialist and intimidating. I assumed my brain just wasn't built for those things.

It turns out they weren't things beyond my ability. They were simply things I hadn't learnt yet. I'm not suddenly an IT genius, I still have to Google things, I still forget settings, I still have to remind myself how I've done something before.

But bit by bit, those little pieces of knowledge start joining together. One thing becomes the foundation for the next. Confidence hasn't appeared overnight. It's grown quietly. One tiny WordPress bug at a time.

I haven't just been building a business. I've been rebuilding my confidence.

I am not a bad plant and neither are you

If you've made it this far, perhaps there's one thing I'd love you to take away from this. Sometimes we mistake difficult conditions for a lack of ability. But maybe you aren't bad at learning.

Maybe you just haven't found the conditions that allow you to thrive.
-Maybe you need more guidance
-More time.
-More patience
-More freedom to ask questions
-Less pressure.
-Less fear of getting something wrong.
-More encouragement.
-More resources.

Plants don't flourish because someone shouts at them to grow faster.(Trust me... I tried it with my ranunculi’s after a second year of failure. It didn't work.)

They flourish when they're given the right conditions for their individual make-up.

And I don't think humans are so different.

Over the past few months I've learnt about WordPress, WooCommerce, analytics, hosting, DNS, caching, responsive design, customer journeys, email marketing, SEO and website performance.

But I think the most important thing I've learnt is how I learn and that I can learn, given the right conditions. It turns out I'm not a bad plant after all.

I'm just a little more like a dahlia than a poppy.