Starting New Things is Hard

For a long time I’ve wanted to learn to play an instrument and put together a website for my writing. Guess which one I’m finally doing?

It took a while to figure out why I wasn’t doing the things I wanted to do. On the surface it seems so simple: if you want to do something, just do it™, right?  I had everything I needed—I’ve actually owned this domain name for more than a year—but something was always stopping me from starting.

Then one day, I heard someone say that we hesitate to start new things because we don’t want to be bad at them. And that was it—I wanted to skip all the learning at the beginning, the trial and error, where you’re just figuring out how to get things together. I wanted to be past all of that and find myself at the part where I felt like I knew what I was doing, where I was incredibly proud of everything I produced and put out into the world. But you can’t do that. You have to be bad before you become okay, you have to be okay before you grow into being good, and you have to be good before you’re great.

One of the main reasons that it’s easier to learn new skills as a child—other than the fact that your brain sponge hasn’t started shriveling up yet—is that they don’t care. Kids don’t care about being bad at things. They will unapologetically suck at something and have the time of their life sucking at it. And everyone’s ok with them sucking at it, because they’re four years old and it was their first soccer game and frankly it’s a miracle they didn’t trip over the ball.

But we need to remember that we don’t stop growing the instant we turn eighteen. We don’t stop wanting to learn and change and try new things, so we need to become more comfortable with being not-so-amazing at them at first. We need to be unapologetic and enthusiastic about it.

Recognizing this universal phenomenon has given me even more respect for every person who creates and shares content, because all of them had to start from scratch. When we see someone else struggling their way through the Preliminary Phase of Suck, we should applaud them like the supportive parents on the sideline of that tiny soccer field for lacing up their shoes, getting out there and trying, because often that’s the hardest part.

I know I’m not the only one who’s been putting something like this off for years, so I hope this speaks to you, too. When you start something new—when you feel the prospect of failure hanging over you—remember that your first try doesn’t have to be flawless. You’ve can give it as many goes in as many different ways as you’re willing to work for. This isn’t American Ninja Warrior: you’ve got more than three tries to mount the Warped Wall.

Unless what you’ve been scared to do is American Ninja Warrior. In that case, make sure you get a good running start.