Be A Beginner
If you were asked to pour a glass of water from a large pitcher without spilling, you could probably do it confidently. But what about asking a three year old to do this same task? They probably wouldn’t have confidence, right?
Here’s what is so fascinating. If you ask a three year old to pour a glass of water without spilling, what would they most likely do?
They’d try. They would allow themselves to fail. They would be a beginner.
Let’s learn from this wisdom and give ourselves permission to be a beginner. This mindset opens the door for generating self-confidence in our lives.
Confidence and self-confidence…what is the difference? If confidence is generated from our knowledge of things that we are good at because of past experiences, self-confidence is what we generate when we aren’t good at it yet. In other words, confidence looks for evidence of things you’ve been able to do or achieve in the past. Self-confidence is about trusting yourself to be able to figure out whatever you need to figure out.
Confidence says “I’m an expert at this.”
Arrogance says “I’m better than you at this.”
Self-confidence says “I don’t know yet, but I’ll figure it out.”
So how do we apply the principle of being a beginner this month? Let’s break it into two steps. First, choose what you want to focus on. And second, practice it in everyday life.
STEP ONE:
Think of something in your life RIGHT NOW that you are a beginner in.
Some examples could be:
- Have you recently moved?
- Has a close relationship recently changed?
- Have the ages of your kids changed?
- Has there been a recent change physically – maybe an injury, or diagnosis, or a shift from how it has operated in the past?
- Have you recently experienced loss in some way?
- Has your daily routine recently changed? Maybe related to work, but could also be related to kids and their schedules.
- Are you undergoing remodeling or any house projects that are out of the norm?
- Did you recently take on a new volunteer role in your church or community?
- Have you made any recent changes to your nutrition or exercise?
- Are you teaching something new to your children or teens that you haven’t done before?
- Have you recently started a business or changed jobs?
Then, complete this sentence:
I am a beginner at ___________________.
Now that you’ve chosen what to focus on, let’s go to step two – practice being a beginner. This has four parts to it:
- DROP THE JUDGMENT. Whenever we step into something new, it is very common for our brains to naturally go to a narrative like “we should know already” or “we should have this figured out” or some version of beating ourselves up because we don’t know what we don’t know. Notice the auto-pilot language and practice stopping. Take a breath and respond to the thoughts instead of reacting to them. Judgement is not the boss. We are.
- BE CURIOUS. You know what beginners do? They make a lot of mistakes. Think of a toddler learning to walk. They fall all the time. But with every fall, they learn something. Maybe it’s how to hold their arms, or where to put their feet, or how to hold their head. They collect data of what doesn’t work to figure out what does work. Collect data. Be curious!
- BE DELIGHTED. Celebrate little moments of figuring something out, even if it’s not the way you want to keep doing it. Talk to yourself with an encouraging voice. “Hey good job me!” “I’m going through this whole new thing in my life and I took a shower today. Great job me!” I promise this is not boasting. This is proactively generating balance in your brain!
- LOOK FOR NEW BEGINNINGS IN NATURE. Go for a walk, look out your window, step outside for a moment. Find clues of how nature is choosing to be a beginner. Are there blossoms on the trees? Birds you didn’t hear a month ago? Is ice melting? Seeing the power of nature choosing to be a beginner can broaden our perspective.
Every day is a new beginning. What will you be a beginner in this Month?
