Be A Beginner

Be a beginner.

I just started messing around with watercolor paints.

That sentence right there actually kind of scares the shit out of me.

Because I like knowing what I’m doing. I like being competent.

I like deciding I’m going to do something and then doing the thing.

Being a beginner does not give you much of that. At all. LOL

You don’t know how much water to use.

You don’t know what the paint is going to do.

You make mud. You overwork it. You think you ruined it.

You stare at it and wonder why the picture in your head looks absolutely nothing like the thing sitting in front of you. So far, every single time.

Old me would have thrown half of it in the trash by now. Patient me is doing something different.

I’m letting it be slow. I’m letting myself learn. I’m letting some of it look like shit, and believe me, it does.

I’m paying attention to what happens when I use more water, less water, a different brush, when I leave it alone instead of screwing with it for another ten minutes.

And there’s something else I’m noticing.

When you’re a beginner, you get to slow down enough to really see things.

You notice the way the water moves the paint.

The way two colors meet and suddenly make something you didn’t expect.

The way a tiny change completely changes what happens next.

There’s curiosity and wonder there.

It’s actually really fucking fun.

Maybe that’s another thing we lose when we get so obsessed with being good at things.

We stop noticing. We stop exploring. We stop being surprised.

And I started thinking about how important that actually is.

We need to be beginners at things. We need to put ourselves in situations where we don’t already know the answer.

Where we’re awkward. Where we have to practice. Where we have to suck a little bit.

Because that is where we learn patience. That is where we learn confidence. That is where we learn what everyone loves to call discipline.

I can think back to learning how to jump rope. I wasn’t magically good at it. But I wanted to be so good at it.

I hit myself with the rope. I missed a bajillion times. I got frustrated. But, I tried again, and again, and again.

I learned how to double jump from jumping off a bottom step and getting that double revolution of the rope. It took FOREVER. But I never gave up.

Hello, 4th grade jump rope champion.

Same thing with riding a bike.

At some point every person cruising around effortlessly on two wheels was wobbling all over the place trying not to fall over.

So the babysitter, Chuckie,  finally just pushed me and let go.

I had two choices. Keep going or crash and burn.

I kept going.

We forget that part once something becomes easy.

We forget how many repetitions happened before confidence showed up.

And then we start something new with our health and expect ourselves to somehow skip that entire process.

We expect to know how to meal plan. How to lift. How to eat differently. How to navigate weekends.

How to stop eating when we’re full. How to stay consistent when life gets messy. How to manage a body that is changing.

And when we’re not immediately good at it, we think something is wrong.

Nothing is wrong.

You’re a beginner.

That’s the job.

And maybe we could bring some of that beginner curiosity into our health too.

Instead of immediately judging everything, notice it instead.

What happens when I eat more protein at breakfast?

What happens when I actually sleep enough?

What happens when I lift a little heavier?

What happens when I stop trying to make every day perfect?

Learn how you work.

Confidence doesn’t come before you start.

It comes from doing the thing enough times that you begin to trust yourself.

Discipline doesn’t magically appear either. You build it every time you keep going when you’re frustrated.

Every time you try again. Every time you resist the urge to throw the whole fucking painting in the trash because it isn’t beautiful yet.

Maybe we need to stop being so afraid of being beginners.

Maybe we need more things in our lives that remind us what it feels like to learn.

To wobble. To miss. To make a mess. To notice. To wonder. To get a little better.

And then one day realize the thing that used to feel impossible has quietly become something we know how to do.

That sounds a whole lot like a health journey to me.

So, I keep practicing the painting.