Embracing something new might answer all your problems

As adults, we oftentimes struggle to be bad at things. We rarely pick up completely new hobbies or research topics we have no prior knowledge on. There’s just something about it that makes us uncomfortable. That’s why many of us never even stop and think about stepping out of their comfort zone in the first place. But embracing a beginner mindset in some areas of our life might just be what we need.

Our hesitation makes sense of course. After all, we have lived long enough to know who we are, what we know, what we like, what we’re enjoying. We might have been forced to acquire skills in areas that we see no point in during our school years. Maybe we remember that time we took a few ballet classes only to find we really didn’t want to go there anymore. 

Doing things outside of “the ordinary” also challenges our sense of self. This perceived self, the person we think we are, often consists of all that we’re good at, the difficulties we’ve overcome. It also includes aspects of what we are not. We are coffee drinkers, not tea people. Or we never leave the house without makeup on. We are bad at baking and do not enjoy it anyway. We’ve maybe gotten through school understanding that we’re talented at sports but less so at maths. 

So why should we maybe change that up?

Many of us end up feeling stuck at some point in our life. We have settled down, arrived in a position in our career that we’ve worked towards, maybe we have achieved many of our goals. There’s a reason the concept of a mid-life crisis exists: sure it feels to have reached many of the goalposts we’ve aimed towards when we were younger but it also comes with responsibilities.

We experience less novelty and excitement when we’ve created a life that is predictable and comfortable. Maybe we wonder what should come next. Is this all there is to life?

By stepping out of these roles we’ve accumulated over the course of our life, we get to experience a hint of that spark and curiosity we might remember from being a child. It might just show us that we are more than who we think we are: more than a bad cook, the perfectionist teacher, the mum who’s bad at saying no and the person who hates Maths.

We might learn that all the life experience makes it easier to apply mathematical logic to problems that might have not made any sense to us as teenagers. Or we create a safe space for exploring sides of us we never got the chance to express before. Who knows? Maybe you will turn out to be really good at something you never got to pick up when you were younger.

Opening up to surprises

Life is full of surprises and unexpected turns – and I believe that is one of the most beautiful things about it. But many of us in our 30s or 40s slowly lose our sense of awe and end up feeling like life’s full of to-dos that we’ll never get to the end of, worries and obligations. 

So when we embrace the mindset of being a beginner at something, we step out of that mindset for a little bit and actively engage in something to find a different balance again.

Okay, you might think to yourself. I get it. Maybe I have stayed a bit too much in my comfort zone lately. But where should I start? 

That’s the fun part. You can explore this in infinite ways and go as fast or easy as you’d like. 

A great way to allow more of it into your life is by spending time with children. If you’re a parent to young kids, maybe take some time to watch them doing something for the first time. Children are born with a natural curiosity and what seems like a never-ending get-back-up-and-try-again-mentality. No matter how many times they fall, they will pull themselves up on the sofa again and again until they succeed and stand for the first few wobbly seconds. But before that, they had to observe their environment, build muscle and control and literally start from zero. Who might be a more inspirational coach?

So think about a skill or a hobby you have stumbled upon recently. Maybe there’s a class where you could explore that a little bit with the help of a teacher and some other people who might be just as new to it as yourself. 

Or you have always secretly held this dream of moving to France but you couldn’t even get yourself to learn French. How about you challenge yourself this year and attempt to acquire enough of it to feel up to some small talk. Who knows, this might be a way to connect to the vivid dreams you harbored in your teens. And just like that you are one step closer to sitting in a café eating a pain au chocolat and enjoying the joie de vivre. 

You could also pick something back up that you used to like doing. I used to love drawing when I was younger but by the time I started university, I had long stopped that and would have probably said it’s pointless or something similar. Many of us grew up internalising beliefs about how what we spend our time with needs to “get us somewhere” or turn into a career. But what if it just helps you find a few moments of calm or shows you a side of yourself you haven’t connected with in forever? 

What I’ve personally found through starting anew

These last couple of years have been full of shifts for me. It sometimes feels like I have been given a new chance at life and now I actually get to feel alive instead of just going through the motions. 

I have always enjoyed the idea of being a “life-long learner” (after all, that was one thing they repeated to us over and over again in teacher traineeship) and regularly read up about new special interests or picked up a new hobby – but really, I’ve been so used to move inside my comfort zone, it took a lot of courage to really embrace the idea of being a beginner. 

For far too long, starting something new came with a lot of inner pressure. If I didn’t expect to be able to be good at it fast, it wasn’t going to happen. I’ve considered myself a perfectionist for so long, I thought it was part of my personality – when really it was just how I had learned to cope. 

By slowly, over time, stepping out of these old patterns and consciously choosing new ways, embracing being bad at something and doing things just for the joy it might bring, I’ve found a new way of life and gotten to know myself on a completely different level. 

And that is a gift nobody else could ever give you – but giving it to yourself could start as easily as putting pen to paper and scribbling away or starting to sing in a choir instead of only doing it secretly when you’re taking a shower.

Bild von Лариса Щербина auf Pixabay