Taking Life with Chances

I love to learn, and for the most part, I have always surrounded myself with people that I feel are far smarter and wiser than I am.

The challenge I run into is being a beginner.

I struggle with not picking things up as fast as I would like, which tends to lead to me throwing in the towel. This was a regular occurrence growing up. I was involved in most sports at one point or another and followed through with none of them. My parents didn’t really “force” me to continue, leaving me to believe that quitting when I wasn’t good at something was okay.

Oddly enough, this wasn’t something that carried into what would become my career for 20 years.

I started as a receptionist and eventually grew into leading a small collections team. And I was good at it.

I LOVED teaching my team, but I also loved when they taught me things they discovered. I probably learned just as much from them as they did from me.

I was also fortunate to learn leadership from some amazing people that I still admire. They showed me that teaching isn’t about dictating how something has to be done. It’s about listening, sharing what you know, and understanding that there can be many ways to get from A to B.

Those became the tools that worked best for me, both when I was teaching and when I was learning.

I need to understand the why behind something. I’m not someone who does something simply because I’m told that’s how it should be done. Teach me why we’re doing it that way. Give me the space to ask questions, understand it, and maybe even figure out a different way to get from A to B.

Maybe part of the difference was that I had that space to learn. I’ve been fortunate that most of my learning has happened in environments where I was given that space. So when I find myself in one that has more of a dictator vibe—just do it this way because I said so—I tend to shut down.

Now, being outside of what was my comfort zone, I’m finding that I’m doing a lot of reparenting myself. Not just with learning new things, but in a lot of areas of my life. I’m figuring out how I want to do things instead of just continuing with what I learned growing up.

Being a beginner is part of that.

Since moving here, I’ve joined groups and become involved in things that have opened me up to all sorts of new learning opportunities. The podcast I do with friends is one of those.

And boy oh boy, some of this shit is much more involved than what I learned in my former life.

Learning about local government. Writing letters to the editors of newspapers. Learning about the mushrooms that grow in this area and the value they have to our ecosystem.

It’s wild.

And a lot of it goes completely over my head when I’m sitting in these meetings, leaving me feeling very out of place.

I know I’m smart in my own right. I’m aware of that. But being able to carry on some of these conversations or keep up during meetings can be rough.

And while I love asking questions, and the people in these groups are eager to answer them, I still get intimidated. Sometimes I get embarrassed.

Which is kind of ridiculous because I am the queen of asking questions.

I love to learn. I’m curious. I want to understand things.

I just want to understand them now.

That’s the problem.

I want to pick things up faster than I do. I want to walk into something new and somehow already understand it. And when I don’t, I get frustrated. If it’s something I can walk away from without impacting too many other people, I have a tendency to give up.

The more I sat with it, the more I realized this really isn’t about smart people.

It’s about me.

I’m impatient with myself. I set expectations that are way too high before I’ve even given myself the chance to learn. My imagination has already created the story where I’m good at it, where I fit right in, where I know all the answers.

Which is especially funny when I think about my career.

I didn’t walk into that first receptionist job knowing how to lead a collections team. I learned. I had people who taught me, gave me the space to ask questions, and allowed me to figure things out along the way. It was collaborative. Eventually, I became the one teaching other people—and they were still teaching me too.

I gave myself years to become that person.

Yet somehow, I walk into a mushroom club meeting and expect myself to know what the fuck everyone is talking about.

Then reality shows up.

I’m the beginner.