A few months ago, I was hanging out with my brother and his grad school friends and we decided to go rock climbing together. Now, I was basically the only one there who wasn’t an expert – at least, I’m pretty sure I was the only one who didn’t have any experience whatsoever.
I had never rock-climbed before in my life.
Not once.
But I do workout (sometimes, at least!).
So I thought it would be a walk in the park. I thought I would get a good hold on those pegs and reach the top of the wall in no time.
Well, you’ve probably already guessed what really happened. It was not a walk in the park. Heck, it wasn’t even a walk outside the park!
It was really hard.
And the most humbling thing was that not only were my brother and his friends extremely skilled at rock climbing but there was a child who must have been about seven years old with arms as muscular as spaghetti who was climbing the hardest part of the wall — with ease.
And when I say the hardest part, I’m talking about an area where only the most confident climbers dared go — you had to hang by nothing but your fingers and swing your whole body to reach the next peg.
Becoming an expert at something is a process
So I tried to climb that imposing wall and I quickly realized it was not going to be as easy as that seven-year-old made it seem. Not even close.
I was a complete beginner, and I was embarrassed.
I looked around at all the people who made it look easy and realized I had no idea what I was doing.
And it was humbling. I wanted to be good at rock climbing, of course, but I didn’t want to start at the beginning. I didn’t want to be the only one who had never rock climbed before.
But I swallowed my pride and decided to try anyway.
And as I held on to those tiny pegs for dear life, my hands slipped.
So I tried again.
This happened over and over, and I was getting more and more frustrated with myself.
My arms began to hurt. I wanted to quit right then and there — at least, my body wanted to quit. But my mind was not willing to throw in the towel. Not yet.
So I tried again.
And again.
All along, my brother and his friends were encouraging me to keep trying.
And after many fails, I finally made it to the top. Not once, but several times.
Keep failure in perspective
Was it easy to keep trying after failing so much?
Not at all.
But if I had given up when the going wasn’t easy, I would never have made it to the top at all.
I left the climbing wall that day knowing that I had met my goal, even though I was still the least experienced climber there. And I was proud.
So what did I learn from that experience? What was the biggest takeaway?
It was this: All too often, we compare our day one with someone else’s year five. We compare our progress as a beginner with someone else’s progress as an expert. And, of course, when we do that we instantly feel inferior.
We mistakenly think the successful people around us have always been successful — they couldn’t possibly understand the struggles of a beginner.
But that thinking is all wrong.
Why?
Because every expert was once a beginner — a beginner who refused to give up. It’s true about rock climbing, writing, or anything else.
No one is born knowing how to write a best-selling book or how to cook a five-course meal — these things have to be learned, often after years and years of trial and error.
“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.” ― Stephen McCranie
Final thoughts
What I learned that day on the climbing wall was that comparing myself to my brother or to his friends was completely pointless.
After all, they had all been rock climbing many times before. They had all slipped and fallen and gotten up again. They had all been beginners at some point too.
The fact is, if you want to be an expert at something, you will have to be a beginner first. There’s no other way.
You will have to fall and get back up and try again, and that’s a good thing. Because the alternative is to never move forward at all, and you certainly don’t want that.
I could have thrown in the towel when I realized rock climbing wasn’t easy at all, but I didn’t. I kept going.
So am I an expert rock climber now? Not even close — I still have a lot to learn.
But I’m closer than I was before.
And I discovered that despite the sore arms and the struggle it took to climb to the top of the wall, it was worth it in the end because I made it. Even though I was embarrassed about being a beginner, I kept going.
Remember — it’s better to be clueless in the beginning and eventually become an expert than to stay clueless because you’re embarrassed to start at the beginning.
Have the courage to try new things, even if you don’t know what you’re doing at first, and you’ll be amazed by how far you’ll go.
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