A useful article popped up on Facebook the other day that gave me a useful definition: "challenge yourself to always be a rookie at something". I've spent a lot of my life refining that which I already know, perfecting it. Obviously, in a professional sense, I need to be the best I can be for my clients. However, in my personal life, it's become more and more limiting: I've built up a wall around myself ("if I can't do it right I won't do it at all").
When I was a child, I received a school report which is burned into my brain: "good at everything except games". Actually, that was a bit of an overstatement - science, for example, was never a natural area for me - but in earlier days, my academic achievements in the basic "three Rs" were fairly near the top of the class. This resulted in my inability to cope with being bad at anything. A few swimming galas in which I consistently came last - I have a couple of silver medals for coming second in a two-horse race - put me off sporting activities of any kind, big time. It took me until my late 40s to realise that you don't have to be good at sport to benefit from it, and to enjoy it.
While some of these new activities of mine (especially the 'budgie-hooping') are proving to be rather addictive, much more than one-off ticks on the list, it's also a new experience for me to try something out and not worry about 'getting it right'. Safety is paramount, of course; but perfect expertise is not necessary, and sometimes isn't even desirable. I now know that I can scuba-dive for a few minutes without coming up for air. It would take a lot more work to get me to a point at which I would comfortably do a 'real' dive. I may progress with that; I may not. But that first scuba experience was thrilling and important in itself, without perfection. And that's the approach I want to start all these activities with - and then see where they take me.
No comments:
Post a Comment