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You're Allowed to Be a Beginner Again · The Nadia Chapman Show

• 0:05
  Welcome back to the Nadia Chapman Show. I'm your host. You guessed it,
• 0:10
  Nadia Chapman. Who else?
• 0:13
  We are August 17th today, and I hope you're having a great summer.
• 0:19
  For some of you, school already started. Your kids or yourself are back in school.
• 0:24
  And for others, you have a few more weeks left. So good for you.
• 0:29
  As for me, I've been on the go and on the road for about four or five weeks
• 0:33
  now, and I'm so happy to be back home
• 0:36
  for the week with my dogs, in my office, with the microphone,
• 0:40
  and I've been brainstorming so many good topics to share with you.
• 0:45
  And the first one today is something that I've been thinking about a lot.
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  I've been having lots of conversations, especially with people my age, Gen X, or older.
• 0:57
  I just felt inspired to come in today talking about change and talking about,
• 1:03
  being okay at starting things from the beginning.
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  And something that really we get worse at as we get older, and that is to be
• 1:13
  a beginner all over again.
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  Because somewhere along the way in our life, we start believing that we should
• 1:19
  already know everything. We should know what we're doing. We should know what
• 1:23
  we want. We should know how to do it.
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  And God forbid, we try something new and oh my God, guess what? We're bad at it.
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  No, thank you. We want to go directly from, oh, I've never done this before
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  to, oh, wow, look at me. I know what I'm doing. I'm amazing at this.
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  And unfortunately, as you know, life doesn't work like that.
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  So today I want to remind you of something.
• 1:48
  You are allowed to be a beginner again, whether you are 18 or 28 or 48 or 78.
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  At whatever age you happen to listen to this, it's okay to be a beginner.
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  You are allowed to walk into rooms not knowing what you're doing fully.
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  You are allowed to start a business and figure things out as you go.
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  You are allowed to take a class to start something new. As a figure skating
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  coach, I see a lot of adult skaters. People, they always wanted to be a figure
• 2:23
  skater. They didn't have the chance. And they start at a later age. And that's okay.
• 2:28
  You are allowed to start working out and not knowing how the machines work at the gym.
• 2:35
  You are allowed to pick up a paintbrush and become an artist,
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  even though you are, I don't know, in your 50s or 60s.
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  You can learn whatever it is. a new language, start dating again,
• 2:46
  change careers, go back to school, start writing, start a podcast.
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  Or maybe it's moving somewhere new. So basically what I'm trying to tell you
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  is that you are allowed to suck at it for a while.
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  All right. Actually, I think that's the part we need to normalize because we
• 3:03
  live in a world where we constantly see people on social media or in the middle of their success.
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  I always say, actually, one of my favorite quote is don't compare your chapter
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  two to somebody's chapter 20.
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  The business, the beautiful house, or the athlete on the podium,
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  or the person with so many followers.
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  And what we usually don't see is the 40 terrible attempts, you know,
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  the things that didn't work, the no's they got.
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  We don't see them Googling things that they were not sure of,
• 3:35
  that they had to figure out themselves. And we don't see the awkward first day. We only see the good.
• 3:39
  If you are an athlete, if you are a figure skater, a lot of you are figure skaters
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  or parents or coaches. you see the nice videos of the beautiful jumps,
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  but you don't see the 100 times that the skater fell.
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  We see the good, but we don't see the beginner. And because we don't see the
• 3:56
  beginner, we start thinking that, oh my gosh, I must be doing something wrong, right?
• 4:01
  But every person that you admire was once absolutely terrible at the thing that
• 4:07
  you admire them for. Think about that for a second.
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  Nobody comes out of the womb knowing how to run a business. Nobody picks up
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  a guitar for the first time and plays at a concert.
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  And nobody, you know, skates for the first time and land double jumps.
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  There was a beginning and there were mistakes, of course. And there were probably
• 4:28
  moments where those people thought, oh my God, maybe I'm not made for this. But...
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  They kept going. So the problem isn't being a beginner. We need to normalize
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  being beginners. The problem is that we attach a meaning to being a beginner.
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  We just don't say, oh, I don't know how to do this. We say, I'm not good at this. Maybe I'm too old.
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  Everybody's ahead of me. Maybe I look ridiculous, or I should know how to do
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  this better, you know, blah, blah, blah. But you took a completely neutral situation.
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  It's just like learning something new. And you turn that into an identity crisis. All of us kind of do that.
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  Because your brain, my brain, would rather us, you know, doing the same thing
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  again and again, as you know, because it's predictable.
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  It's safe. It's less chances of being embarrassed. It's less chances of failure,
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  of course. And there's less chances of anybody looking at you and thinking,
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  oh my gosh, she's not very good at this.
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  And here's where you have to make a decision guys,
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  are you building your life around avoiding embarrassment or are you building
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  your life around becoming who you want to become
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  and I'm going to pause for a second I'm going to ask you that again maybe that
• 5:48
  is your writer downer for today or maybe that's something you can just think
• 5:51
  about or journal about are you building your life around avoiding embarrassment?
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  Or are you building your life around becoming who you want to become?
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  Because those two lives look completely different.
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  I want you to think about something you would love to do. Okay.
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  And that's something you already know how to do.
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  Something maybe that you've been curious about. Maybe you've been thinking about
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  it for months, maybe years.
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  Maybe once in a while you're thinking, oh God, I would love to do that.
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  But then immediately say, yeah, but I'm too old, or I don't know where to start,
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  or I don't have experience.
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  People are already so much better than me. Okay. I get it. And,
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  I mean, seriously, and there's always going to be people who are better than
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  you. Maybe they've been doing it for longer.
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  You don't walk into a skating class or a yoga class or any class getting angry
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  at the person next to you because they're better than you.
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  Maybe they've been doing it for 10 years or 12 years. You've been there for
• 6:55
  about five minutes. So give yourself a chance. Give yourself a break.
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  And I think one of the greatest freedoms that you can give yourself is this.
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  Stop requiring yourself to be good at something before you're willing to do it.
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  And say that again in your head. Stop requiring yourself to be good at something
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  before you're willing to do it.
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  Because that requirement will keep you trapped. It will keep you stuck.
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  So as a life and mindset coach, I'm going to tell you, instead of asking yourself, will I be good at this?
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  Ask yourself, would I enjoy becoming good at this?
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  And that's a completely different question. Would I enjoy learning?
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  Would I enjoy discovering what I'm capable of?
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  Would I enjoy seeing who I become if I stick with this for, I don't know, even just a year?
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  Because being a beginner isn't a permanent identity. It's a season.
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  And you don't get to become experienced at something without going through it.
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  I also want to say something to those of you who are starting over right now,
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  whether it's with a career change or relationship.
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  Sometimes life makes you a beginner. You know, a relationship will end or a job will disappear or,
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  if you are my age, your kids are growing up, maybe they're off to college,
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  maybe you are moving or even as simple as your body's changing or circumstances
• 8:13
  in your life are changing.
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  The version of your life that you understood for a while suddenly doesn't fit anymore.
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  And then you're thinking, what the hell do I do now?
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  And maybe you don't know, Maybe you're not supposed to know yet.
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  Maybe you are in the beginning and beginning is messy.
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  As a human being, trust me, we have this obsession with having everything figured
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  out and quick. But sometimes the most powerful thing you can do,
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  the most powerful sentence you can tell yourself is, I don't know yet,
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  but I'm willing to find out.
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  And that takes a lot of courage to accept and to repeat to yourself that I don't
• 8:55
  know yet, but I'm willing to find out, you know, not knowing, but moving anyway.
• 9:00
  So here's what I want you to do after this episode.
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  I want you to pick one thing that you've been avoiding because you don't want
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  to be a beginner at, okay? Just one, not 10.
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  And then make the goal ridiculously small. Not like, oh, I'm gonna become a
• 9:17
  writer and sell books by Christmas. No, no, no, no.
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  Write one page, okay?
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  Not, oh, I'm gonna start a business tomorrow.
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  No, just research the idea, go one step at a time.
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  I don't want you to think anything too drastic and too big that you're not going
• 9:33
  to achieve. Like, oh, I'm getting in great shape tomorrow. Just start with the walk.
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  And the reason I'm saying this is that I want you to see your goal,
• 9:41
  what you want to achieve, what you've been avoiding as a giant staircase.
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  And tomorrow you need to take the next step, just the next step,
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  and then the next one, and then the next one. See where I'm going?
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  Because confidence doesn't usually show up at the beginning of the adventure.
• 10:00
  And what I'm trying to tell you today, maybe the message I'm trying to come
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  across with today is that your life doesn't have to get smaller just because you're getting older.
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  You can still surprise yourself in many ways. You can still change your mind.
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  You can still learn. There's so much to learn.
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  You can still pivot to a completely different direction.
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  It's okay. You can still walk into rooms where you know absolutely nothing.
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  Trust me, when I started this whole life coaching business, there was a lot
• 10:30
  of new for me. I was a beginner at many things, including recording this podcast.
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  And maybe what I want you to take away is that there are versions of you that
• 10:39
  you haven't met yet. And that should be a very exciting thing.
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  But you're never going to meet that version of you, the many versions of you,
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  if you insist on staying inside the things that you're good at.
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  So go ahead and go embarrass yourself a little. Ask stupid questions.
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  Take the class, make the call, apply for the job, try something new,
• 11:00
  fall, get up, mess it up, laugh about it, laugh to yourself.
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  I always say that one of the most important things to do to keep your sanity
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  is to just learn to laugh at yourself.
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  But go ahead and try things again. Be new at something.
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  Because you know what's actually very exciting about being a beginner is that
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  everything is possible. You know, you don't know how good you could become at
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  something. You don't know where this could lead you.
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  You don't even know what door can open after you take that first step.
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  So you don't really know how much your life could change because you finally
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  gave yourself permission to start boldly and badly. So if you've been waiting
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  for permission and you're listening to this right now, here it is.
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  You are allowed to be a beginner again, period.
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  And maybe you're not behind. Maybe you're just at the beginning of something
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  really freaking good. All right. I'll talk to you next time.
• 11:55
  This is the Nadia Chapman Show. And wherever you're listening today,
• 11:58
  go do something that you're not good at. That's it. Thanks for listening.