You’ve got to be a beginner before you can be anything else – The Growing Pains of Learning

Oh it’s hard to pick up a new skill, sometimes. Today I’m talking about changing our mindset around learning new things.

Transcript –

Hello my friends and welcome back to This Quote Changed My Life – a podcast about inspired action. My name is Tracey and I’m the host of the show! I’m also a Wellness Coach who is obsessed with mindfulness and mindset (and pizza) and I’m coming to you from Sydney Australia.

Thank you so much for joining me back here for another episode of This Quote. I truly hope you are safe where you are in your part of the world – I know alot of you are listening from America, the UK, Canada, Italy and even India – so I am sending you alot of support wherever you are during this weird time of Coronavirus. I know alot of podcasts are talking about COVID-19 and while I mention it here because it’s what we’re all experiencing, I actually do want to keep this a COVID free podcast. I’m not here to talk science or politics, and you’re not here for it either haha, so let’s get stuck into this week’s quote that has changed my life.

The quote is –
You’ve got to be a beginner before you can be anything else.

You’ve got to be a beginner before you can be anything else. Which of course sounds pretty straight forward right – but if you’ve listened to my podcast, you’ll probably figure out that most quotes are really simple, but the problem is – we’re not listening! We’re not really taking to heart what the message is – which is okay, sometimes messages are meant for us later in our lives – but I feel like this quote is something to keep in mind at all stages of our lives.

You’ve got to be a beginner before you can be anything else.

And I see this now when I look at my kids learning a new skill but I think most of us still think that things should of come easier to us because that’s just how we wanted it to go. We wanted to get from point A to point B TODAY and it’s kind of embarassing that we didn’t get there the way we thought we would. We actually needed to look at point A1 and then A2, and A3-25 before we could reach point B. I think this has alot to do with how spoiled with are with technology these days – and don’t get me wrong, who doesn’t love how fast we can connect with each other online, or order food, or google a question — but educating yourself is a different thing.

Have you heard of the term ‘a learned skill’? Well that’s what we really should be pairing the term ‘beginner’ with – I’m a beginner and this task will be a learned skill. Now I won’t go into the fine mechanics of what learning is – but here’s what I want you to remember, and what you could probably teach to your kids or anyone going through some learning growing pains.

Learning is a process, you need to keep your mind open to the fact that you will never know everything, but you will know enough to keep going to the next stage, if you keep absorbing and expanding along with it. No one is ever born 100% ready to go, perfection at the beginning, nowhere to go, already at the highest peak of all humanity — I mean, how boring and kind of weird would that be? Developing new skills is what humans do daily. Even when we’re not aware, we are experiencing new things all the time. We get good at new things over time too. And I think that’s a really cool thing – lifelong learning.

It confirms to me that our brains are neverending – we have the capacity to grow and build and figure stuff out, if we let ourselves sit in that beginners seat and learn from other peoples experiences.

I absolutely love saying that I’m a lifelong learner – I tell my kids that, they see me signing up for different courses, trying new hobbies, because I want them to see that it”s okay to start at the beginning and not be perfect at it. I think it’s refreshing to see someone put in the hard work right from the start, ask those questions, search for answers. Be a student in all sense of the word, and not be ashamed to not know an answer but keep going anyway.

You’ve got to be a beginner before you can be anything else.

I’d love to know whether you’re a beginner at something right now? Have you taken up a new hobby or started on a new project? Maybe a new skill? Let me know if this quote resonate with you today by searching for me on Instagram under @makesunshineco or my website makesunshine.org

Thanks so much for listening, I’ll speak to you all next week