Last weekend I tried learning how to ride an electric unicycle. I will be completely honest, it scared the crap out of me…I made assumptions about how hard it would be, getting hurt, what people would think (and the comments they’d make), but I did it anyways.
While in the store, the seller made a comment about why he felt adults give up so easily when attempting to ride the unicycle. He was finding that many people came in and expected that it would be easy to learn and when they didn’t get the hang of it on the first try, they gave up. As adults, we have this assumption that because we are adults, we’ll quickly pick something up. If we don’t, we aren’t “enough” (smart enough, in-shape enough, young enough, etc.). Yes, while we are adults and there are many things we’ve learned over the years that aide in quickly learning something new, that isn’t always the case-especially when it comes to something like learning to ride a unicycle.
This got me thinking…
There are two things that help me master something new. One, having people in my corner or being my own cheerleader. Growing up, we have people cheering us on when we learn to walk, speak, do well in school, and so on. Having this positive feedback makes learning fun as we celebrate small wins and eventually the bigger win down the road. We feel someone’s support and become motivated to keep going, work harder, and push through. Yeah, sometimes we have those “haters” who refuse to see and work through their own insecurities and project this onto you. But if you can become your own cheerleader (feeling strongly in that what you are doing will better you and promote the life in which you want to live) the comments and actions of others may hurt, but ultimately can be taken for what they really are…not your problem. 😉
Two, failure needs to happen. Failure builds character, influences growth, and improves your ability to ride those waves of change. When I first learned to ride a bike, I didn’t just hop on and poof, I could ride a bike. I used training wheels for a while before learning to ride with my sister on the back of the bike and then riding it on my own. It wasn’t a process that lasted a day, it took time. I needed to build the strength, muscle memory (or as I like to say familiarity) before I mastered riding a bike on my own. I fell and got upset, but I kept getting back up and trying again. If we want to be good at anything, we need to practice and take risks knowing that every failure will bring us closer to our goal…even if it doesn’t feel that way in the moment.