I don’t know how many times I’ve encouraged someone to try new things. Whether it’s my kids or people online, I’m always a big fan of finding and trying something new. I push myself to do new things when it comes to exercise and trying new things like making jewelry or candles. At no point would I tell you that it’s easy to try new things. I do think it’s necessary though.
It’s never easy to be a beginner. You will probably suck – at first. You will make mistakes and possibly mess some things up. That’s still not enough of a reason to not jump in and try it. The thing is, most of us don’t like looking dumb. For some reason, we don’t like to do things unless we are good at them. It’s as if we think we should be automatic experts at everything or we don’t want to try it. When you think about it, that doesn’t even make sense. How do we expect to be experts at stuff we don’t even try?
Recently I was listening to a podcast where they interviewed Pinky Cole about her new book. It’s called, I Hope You Fail. Here’s an example of the chapters: I Hope You Don’t Believe in Yourself, I Hope You Don’t Get That Raise, I Hope The Customers Don’t Show Up. She lays out all of these kinds of combative statements to make readers realize that these things happening can be just the thing we need to move toward what’s meant for us.
Listening to her talk about the book was right on time for me and where I am in life right now. I’ve been working hard at something that just isn’t going my way. So, I’m feeling like it’s all telling me to try something else. The thing is, what I’m feeling led to try is new territory. That can be terrifying.
I have been doing some things that have left me feeling like I’m just smacking my head into a wall. Instead of continuously trying to cram this square peg into a round hole, I’m going to pivot into something else. I’m diving in head first to embrace things I don’t know. It’s a bit scary, but I’m going to try it anyway. I may fail. I may succeed. One thing I’ll definitely do is learn.
I’m trying to remember that no matter how bad I am at something, there’s always space for me to get better. I remind myself that I didn’t know how to be a TV producer until I’d done it. I was horrible at planks until I kept at it. The same was true about any number of things that I’ve tried. The trick is to just.keep.at.it. Practice doesn’t always lead to perfection but it most certainly leads to progress.
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