Nobody’s born knowing how to parallel park. They just did it badly in an empty lot until it wasn’t bad anymore.
CREATIVITY
WHAT THIS MEANS
Competence that looks effortless was built out of a period of being bad at it where nobody was watching. The empty car park, the cones, the twenty attempts that ended at an angle: that stage exists for everyone and simply is not visible afterwards. What you are comparing yourself with is the finished product of somebody else’s ugly practice.
Find the low stakes version of whatever you are avoiding and do it badly on purpose. Empty car park, empty gym, nobody around. Be deliberately bad somewhere private rather than slightly bad in public.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Where could you practice badly without anybody else around?
MORE IN GROWTH, CHANGE & REINVENTION
- The rice-to-water ratio changes with the rice. Lots of rules you grew up with were only rules for someone else’s pot.
- Start a hobby at twenty-five and you might be the oldest beginner in the class. Someone has to be.
- Thank the older person at work who answered your hundredth question without sighing. That was a choice.
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.