When you learn something new, are you afraid of failure or how you look to others? Don’t.
Look at children. They’re wired to learn. When my nephew was learning to walk in the early 90s, he fell more than he walked but it didn’t matter to him. He got up and tried again .. and again .. and again.
When I was 10 in 1960, I learned to ride a two-wheel bicycle. A teenage boy who lived across the street from us held my bike seat and ran down the road with me lots of times. I didn’t learn. A teenage girl who lived several houses down from him did the same as him three times. Then she let go of my seat while I was riding. I made the mistake of looking back to see if she was still there and I fell. She yelled down the block to get up and try again so I did. I rode!!!
When we were kids, neither my nephew nor I had worried then about what people would think. We were learning and making progress and eventually we succeeded.
He and I have both used this attitude (except for a few times when we didn’t) over the years.
Can we learn something from children’s behaviour as they learn to walk, run, jump, swim and talk? Yes. We can and should apply this “can do” attitude every time we learn a new skill. As the song Pick Yourself Up composed in 1936 says …
“Pick yourself up. Take a deep breath. Dust yourself off. And start all over again. Nothing’s impossible, I have found. For when my chin is on the ground I pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again.”
Remember the following every time you learn something new.
Have a “beginner’s mind”. Think of yourself as a child and how you learned to talk, crawl, walk. Everything was new to you and you looked at others and wanted to do what they did … and you eventually did.
Plan to fail – a lot. Then get up and try again. Each failure is one step closer to success as you define it.
Feel uncomfortable. Look foolish. Everyone does as a beginner. You don’t have a choice of how others see you (and you shouldn’t care) while you’re mastering something new. Smile. Laugh. Try again.
You can read about how to do it but that will never be enough to take you from a beginner to an expert. You have to get off the sidelines and DO IT!
Prepare for the bumps and bruises you get along the way. It’s the only way to learn, isn’t it. When children are learning to walk, they fall and when they do they sometimes hurt themselves and cry. But they don’t cry for long. They fail, shed a few tears, pick themselves up, and try again.
As someone once wrote “having a beginner’s mind means you’re fearless”.
“Beginner’s mind means having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level.”
Lisa Bloom, Storytelling Coach
Think about a time as a child when you were learning something new. How did you feel? Remember that feeling and let us know in the Comments.