Latest / Starting Over: Stories of Reinvention, Hope & Second Chances / The Brave Art of Being Terrible at Something New | Starting Over
Transcript
- I stood in the middle of a pottery studio, covered in wet clay, and realized I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. It was terrifying. And it was the best feeling I’ve had in years. Let’s get real for a second. When was the last time you were genuinely good at something? I mean, truly excellent. Maybe it’s your job. Maybe it’s organizing your pantry. Maybe it’s making that specific pasta sauce your grandmother taught you. We build our identities on these pillars of competence. We say things like, 'I’m the organized one' or 'I’m the creative one.' And while that feels safe, it’s also incredibly heavy. Because if being competent is who we are, then being bad at something feels like losing ourselves. I see this so often in my own life, and I bet you do too. You try to pick up a new hobby—maybe knitting, or coding, or salsa dancing—and within ten minutes, you’re frustrated. Not because it’s hard, but because you’re comparing your Chapter One to someone else’s Chapter Twenty. You’re looking at the finished product and forgetting that every single person who looks skilled started exactly where you are right now: confused, clumsy, and probably a little embarrassed. I need to share a story with you because it’s fresh and it still makes me blush. Last week, I decided to take a pottery class. Now, Sacha Beasty, the woman who writes scripts and hosts podcasts and generally pretends to have her life together, walked into that room thinking she could just wing it. I thought, 'How hard can spinning clay be?' Oh, honey. It is hard. My first bowl looked less like a vessel and more like a sad, lopsided hat. The clay collapsed under its own weight, which felt personally offensive. I wanted to quit. I wanted to throw my apron down and leave before anyone saw the disaster I was creating. But there was this older woman next to me, hands steady as stone, who didn’t even look up from her wheel. She just said, 'It wants to fall. Let it fall. Then start again.' That was the pivot point for me. I stopped fighting the clay. I stopped trying to impress the room. I just accepted that I was terrible at this. And in that acceptance, something shifted. I wasn't performing anymore. I was just playing. There is a Japanese concept called Shoshin, or 'Beginner’s Mind.' It sounds spiritual, but it’s actually very practical. It means approaching a task with no preconceptions, no ego, and an open mind. When you are a beginner, you don’t know how things should go. You don’t have expectations. You just have curiosity. Think about when you learned to ride a bike. Did you worry about your form? Did you care if your knees looked awkward? No. You were focused on balance, on movement, on the sheer joy of not falling over. There was a purity to that effort. As adults, we lose that. We think hobbies are for leisure, but they’ve become another metric for success. We want to be good at them immediately. We want the Instagram-worthy result by Tuesday. But if you give yourself permission to be bad, you unlock a different kind of joy. You stop judging yourself. You start noticing the texture of the material, the rhythm of the motion, the small victories that no one else sees. I believe resilience isn’t just about bouncing back from trauma or career loss. It’s also about building the muscle of starting over, even when it’s low stakes. Every time you try something new and fail, you are proving to your nervous system that failure is survivable. You are teaching your brain that being incompetent doesn’t mean you are worthless. It just means you are learning. This is crucial for women specifically, who are often socialized to be perfect, to be helpful, to be polished. When you choose a hobby where you are a beginner, you are rebelling against that pressure. You are saying, 'I am allowed to be messy here.' You are carving out a space where the only goal is presence, not performance. And that space heals us. It reminds us that we are more than our output. We are humans who can explore, stumble, and grow without needing an audience to validate our worth. So, what should you try? It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s something you’re genuinely curious about, not something you think you should do. Maybe it’s watercolor painting. Maybe it’s learning to juggle. Maybe it’s baking sourdough bread (which, by the way, is basically chemistry with a side of patience). The key is that you must be willing to be the worst person in the room. Find a class where you don’t know anyone. Sign up for a workshop where the instructor expects zero experience. Embrace the awkwardness. When you walk into that room, tell yourself, 'I am here to be a beginner.' Let go of the need to produce. Let go of the need to share your results online. Just be there. Feel the materials. Make mistakes. Laugh when you mess up. I promise you, the people around you are too busy worrying about their own clumsiness to judge yours. We are all just trying to keep our wheels spinning. Here is the beautiful part. After weeks of making ugly bowls, I made one that held water. It wasn’t symmetrical. It had a slight wobble. But it worked. And holding that little imperfect vessel in my hands, I felt a surge of pride that had nothing to do with perfection. It was pride in persistence. Pride in showing up when it was hard. That is the dignity of starting from scratch. It’s quiet, but it’s powerful. It changes how you approach other areas of your life. When you face a challenge at work or in a relationship, you’ll remember the pottery wheel. You’ll remember that you can start over, that you can learn, that you can be bad at something today and okay at it tomorrow. You carry that confidence with you. You realize that growth isn’t a straight line. It’s a spiral. You circle back to the same lessons, but each time, you’re a little stronger, a little more patient, a little more kind to yourself. Thank you for letting me into your day. I hope you find something today that allows you to be beautifully, wonderfully bad at it. Until next time, keep embracing the chaos. I’m rooting for you, always.