Embracing The Beginner Within…
A couple of weeks ago, I was helping out my alma mater coaching certification school with a Zoom tech facilitation role for one of their yearlong certification course sessions. I have been doing this role for them for about a year and a half now, started after about 6 months from my own obtaining my own certification. The role is assisting with all the technical aspects of hosting a 4–5-day long workshop/training, such as managing the breakout rooms, sharing documents or music, helping students with their technical questions regarding zoom or internet connections, etc. The goal is to help move the tech part into the background, helping create a container for learning that is supportive and limiting as many distractions as possible. Yes, I get paid for my part in the faculty, but I also get to essentially audit the course again and again.
Why is that last piece important to share with you? Because, for me, my entire experience when I took my certification course was re-learning how to be a beginner again. I didn’t realize it at the time though. I started to catch on toward the final session, toward the end of my certification year but didn’t fully connect until after I graduated. And now, as I sit on various certification course sessions or other workshops the school has to offer, I am repeatedly reminded about the concept of re-learning to be a beginner and the gift this offers us all…. if we would just be open to receiving the message.
Pragmatically, re-learning to be a beginner helps support me as a coach because my clients will be learning new ways of showing up in the world through our coaching together. I would be inviting them into noticing things about themselves they may have never noticed before or to learn a new practice or activity to support their deepening development. Getting in touch with how it feels to learn new things can help me feel what my clients might be going through in that transition process. It would help me build more compassion for the clunkiness they might be experiencing - the doubt, the self-judgment or criticism, the resistance they may find to learning new habits or skills. But there is something so much deeper to this all that is less pragmatic.
From my experience, going through my own coaching certification journey, observing new students coming into the school to begin their own journeys through the course, over and over, and my observations of my clients’ experiences with their coaching programs working with me, I have realized that embracing the body of a student, a learner, a beginner, as a life-long way of being rather than just for a moment in time, is transformational. It is a new way to walk through the world and allows for an open mind and open heart. It softens the presence of the ego and loosens the grip of our personalities just a bit.
I remember getting my corporate job in 2003 and hating every moment of the learning process you had to go through in each new role. I found myself desperately learning what I could as fast as I could to feel competent enough. See? No longer the newbie! Then I would look for the next opportunity and/or promotion. I did this with each role I was in… rinse and repeat. I remember how uncomfortable being the newbie was, and strongly wanting to reduce that feeling as quickly as possible. I thought being a beginner was not a good thing. It was a weak state of being. I wanted to be skilled so others could come to me for help. I moved quickly and became very skilled at what I was doing in as short of a time as I could. While I was learning (yes), I wasn’t really LEARNING. I was becoming competent but not an expert. Being an expert was also boring to me since I thought you could only be an expert in one thing. I wanted to know a bunch about a lot. And I wasn’t open-minded or open-hearted at all. I had blinders on my peripherals and only had my eyes and mindset on my next goal to achieve.
Looking back, if I had slowed downed and embraced being a beginner, I would have seen all the other opportunities I never knew to even consider, to explore. I would have developed deeper listening skills or leadership tools along the way which could have set me up for success later down the line. Instead, I continued to face my work and life as a trial by fire. “Figure it out as you go.” “Stress is part of the journey.” “And don’t fail – fake it until you make it!” I am exhausted now writing down these narratives that played such a role in my life for almost 20 years.
I still find myself falling into some of these personality pitfalls of mine, but I’m learning to give myself some grace when I notice these patterns re-emerging. I lived half my life or more with this mindset and it will not change overnight. I laugh a bit, with self-compassion and a bit of amusement. Then seek to find the beginner in me again.
I like myself as a student now. She is more calm, curious, and observant. She asks more questions with limited expectations. She gets excited over new opportunities that might feel way out of her wheelhouse or on a totally different trajectory. She feels adventurous and inspired to me. I want to embody her more and more every day. I desire for all reading this little blog and all those in my life to experience the same wonderment she offers me.
Learning new things, trying new activities, and meeting different types of people, all help us stretch the muscle that keeps us from stagnation. Not believing everything you think, challenging your own beliefs, and questioning things most take at face value is also beginner’s mind approach to life. What can I learn today? It opens the mind to fresh ideas and new places. It opens the heart to see all the possible new mentors out there in the world.
I heard it said once that the moment you believe you are an expert at something is the moment you stop growing. I feel the world can benefit from us all having a little more childlike curiosity and desire to be a student of life.
