498. How to Be a Beginner

It’s very fun to be good at things, to be the expert, to be the master. But our most amazing lives, most fulfilling, most rewarding, and best contribution we can make in the world come from being willing to be new, to try things and do things that we are not good at. And if you believe this, but you wanna know how to get more comfortable with being a beginner, then today’s episode is for you. This is episode 498, How to Be a Beginner.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

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Hello, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Just a couple of quick reminders for you that we have some things coming up for those of you who are coaches or who have thought about becoming a coach. For those of you who are coaches or who have thought about becoming a coach. For those of you who are coaches or course creators or have some version of an online service-based business similar to coaching, we are doing Marketing Bootcamp this week. It is happening just a few days from when this episode airs. I will not be teaching this again at least until next year. And you don’t want to wait that long to have success in your business.

Let’s make this the year that your business doubles from what it was last year or quadruples from what it was last year, depending on where you’re at and how committed you are to what we’re going to do. I’m going to help you map out your marketing for the whole year at JodyMoore.com/marketing. Again, that is JodyMoore.com/marketing. Sign up, come and join me live if you can. If not, we’ll send you out the replay. No worries.

Second thing happening is I’m going to be teaching a coach training that is going to be amazing if I do say so myself. I have taught and trained coaches for a long time in different capacities in the past, but I am taking the best of everything I’ve done and creating a coach training that is for people who have never been trained before or have little to no experience. And Maybe you went through some kind of a program, but you’re not feeling very confident.

So the spots in this coach training are very limited. I do not want a big group of people. I want a small group. I want to get to know you. I want to work with you intimately. I want to give you specific feedback on your coaching. I want to help you build your program. 

There’s all kinds of things that will go into this coach training, but in order to get the information and learn how to apply, because it will be application only, you need to go to JodyMoore.com/training. So again, right now that will get you onto the waitlist, JodyMoore.com/training. We will be sending out information to the waitlist members only about what this program entails and then how to apply and I cannot wait to work with you. So that’s what we got going on around here.

Now, I wanna talk to you today about how to be a beginner. And the reason this came up for me is because I am feeling like a beginner. I am a beginner in few different things right now. I have some new courses and new programs and a new coach I’ve hired in a new community of people I don’t really know. 

So there’s just a lot of new things happening for me that I’m trying to learn, trying to figure out and trying to do. And I’m noticing a lot of stuff come up for me. I’m noticing a lot of emotions, a lot of frustration, a lot of overwhelm, a lot of what feels like wasted time as I do something and it’s totally wrong and I have to do it all over again. And I’m just remembering how challenging it is being a beginner.

And so I thought we would get on here and talk about it today. I want to begin with why I think this is such a useful skill. I think as we grow up, as we become adults, for some reason, we grow less and less comfortable with being a beginner. We think that because of whatever age we are, that we should just be good at things. And if we’re not good at them, then we should just stay away from them and not do them. Have you noticed this? 

Have you noticed yourself think, I’m just not good at that? Do you ever say this? Kids don’t say that really. If it’s something that they want to be good at, they say, maybe I want to learn how to do that. Maybe I should take that class. Maybe I should play that sport. Maybe I want to try this, right? That’s what my kids will say. Maybe I want to try football, mom. Maybe I want to try this thing.

As adults, we don’t really say that very much anymore. We’re just like, you know what, not a singer. I’m not a great singer. When in reality, obviously I could go take some voice lessons or something and learn how to be a better singer if I wanted to. So this is an interesting thing that happens as we age.

Now, here’s the reason. Our brains develop and they get stronger in many ways and wiser in many ways, but also a little bit more foolish in certain ways, if you think about it. So the primitive part of the brain does not want us to be a beginner at all. It doesn’t like it. It goes against everything the primitive brain is designed to do, which is to save energy. It doesn’t happen when we’re new at something right? It takes so much more effort and maybe mental energy or maybe physical energy or maybe both, takes so much more time. It just takes a lot to do something that you’re not good at, right?

Our brains also want to seek pleasure and avoid pain. And again, being new at something goes against all of that. And so your brain will try to offer you every reason in the book why you shouldn’t do this. And you will say to me, it just feels true, Jody. It just feels like I’m too old to do that. It feels like it’s too late. It feels like that’s not gonna, what’s the word people use? That would be a waste of time or a waste of money.

What I like to remind you is like, there’s no such thing as any of that. There’s no such thing as too late. There’s no such thing as too old. There’s no such thing as that you’re not skinny enough or that you’re too skinny. All of that’s just made up nonsense, right? If we remember that the point of this life is to develop ourselves. That’s what I believe is the point of this life. It’s to develop myself and a really good way to develop myself is to try new things, to serve other people and to go pursue whatever I want to pursue just because I want to.

Did you know you can just want to, you don’t have to have a reason? You just want to, you’re just interested, it just sounds kind of fun, you’re just kind of curious about it. You just wanna see what it would be like. You just wanna challenge yourself to be a beginner. I’m gonna give you a couple of reasons why I recommend that in just a minute. 

But sometimes we have bigger reasons, or I should say other reasons that go along with it. Maybe you do wanna make some money. Maybe you want to, I don’t know, learn about how to care for somebody with a certain health condition because somebody in your life has that health condition and now you’re new at learning how to take care of that person. Okay, there can be all kinds of reasons, but I just kind of want to, is reason enough? If that’s true, then there’s no such thing as wasted time or wasted money.

Because if I just wanted to learn this thing because it sounds interesting and I kind of want to see what’s possible, then it’s not a waste. That’s the best way to live your life, right? Developing yourself. So there’s two reasons why I recommend you be a beginner at many things. You try things, you sign up for things, you experiment with things, you take classes, you take courses, you read books, you maybe just experiential learning, hands-on, let’s try it out kind of learning. All of those things I recommend for two reasons.

Number one, to avoid boredom. Now this sounds strange to say to adults because kids say all the time, mom, I’m bored, but adults rarely do. We in fact, usually say things like, I’m so overwhelmed. I have so much going on. I just wish I had a minute. I don’t have any free time. So what I mean by boredom is less about like filling your time and more about challenging your brain in the way that it likes to be challenged.

Now, I said earlier that your brain wants to save energy. It does. But there’s also other parts of your brain that want to find things that are interesting and challenging and see what’s possible and see what we can do. So they say that mastery is boring. And I think this is fascinating to think about. Because if you’re trying to learn something new that’s difficult and complicated, like let’s say you decide, you move here to San Diego like my family and I have, and you decide that you wanna become a surfer, you wanna learn to surf.

Okay, you might be out there in the water paddling around trying to catch a wave, noticing that there are some surfers out there who have mastered surfing. They can catch the waves easily. They, I don’t know what else is involved in surfing, just that, I guess. And it appears to be like so fun. And it is in a way more fun than constantly getting beat up by the ocean, right? But the truth is at some point that will become boring. It will become so easy that it doesn’t fulfill the part of our brains that wants to be challenged, if you will.

Now, with something like surfing, where you have different ocean conditions every day and there’s a lot of variables, that’s going to be less “boring”. But my point is we have a desire to keep learning and growing and developing ourselves. Okay? So number one, avoid boredom by being a beginner at things.

Number two, humility. Okay? I want to remain humble. I want to be a person who isn’t afraid to ask for help, who isn’t afraid to say, I am just not good at this at all. Can someone help me? Can someone show me how? I find that that seems to be good for my spirit. That seems to keep me in check because there are a couple of things that I think I’m pretty good at actually. And I like to be good at things, but I also like to counter it with being not good at things. So I don’t start thinking I’m something special or I don’t think that I’m more special than anyone else, right? 

Like we’re all good at some things and not good at other things. And that I find helps strengthen my relationship with myself. Because I can be not good at something and I don’t have to make it mean that I’m not a good person. Or I don’t have to make it mean that other people are going to be judging me.

And here’s the truth, people might. People might mock us or laugh at us or be annoyed with us. This is what we’re afraid of. This is why we don’t want to do things we’re not good at. We don’t want people to be annoyed with us or to laugh at us or to think that we’re being ridiculous. Who do we think we are trying this new thing?

But what it requires is that I don’t put very much attention and weight on that. Okay? It’s not that I’m like, yeah, it’s cool. You don’t, you don’t like me. You’re laughing at me. I’m cool with that. Like, I don’t really like to think that people are laughing at me, but what I have to do to be a beginner is to just recognize that it doesn’t really matter. It’s not important. It’s not relevant. And stop focusing on it. Stop thinking about it.

Just like when I am good at something and people think it’s really impressive or they want to tell me that I’m good at it, that’s not really important either. Do you realize this? What other people think of you doesn’t tell us about you, it tells us about them.

So when you recognize that being good at something or not good at something just really indicates probably how much experience you have with it, maybe how much time you’ve put into it, and a little bit of natural ability, but it doesn’t determine your value or your worth, even if other people try to talk about it as though it does, then you get everything in check and you can start living your life in the way that you want to. And being a beginner is a big part of that.

Now, I’m gonna give you some strategies and tools. I actually have six things that I want you to keep in mind that will help you to be a beginner. But before I do, I want to go back to boredom for just a minute because I wanted to flesh this idea out a little more. I forgot this part.

It’s interesting to me to notice that even from a very young age, we want to try to do something that’s a little bit challenging. I’m not talking over the top overwhelming, I’m just talking a little bit challenging. We get something really satisfying and rewarding out of doing something a little bit challenging.

I was thinking about kids when they’re younger and how they all want to push the button on the elevator when we’re out in public. And then they outgrow that at a certain point because you know what? Pushing the button becomes too easy and kind of boring. But in the beginning it’s like, am I going to get the right button? What floor are we going to? Mom, are we going up or down? Can I find the right button?

Can I push the button? Can I make it light up? There’s maybe a little bit of like a sensory satisfaction of feeling the button go in and out, but still there’s something about that for a young kid that’s the right level of challenge. In fact, they all fight over like whose turn is it to push the button, right? But then after a while, they grow up and we all grow up and then nobody really cares who’s going to push the button on the elevator.

Maybe you can relate to this when you learn to drive, or if you have, like I do, kids learning to drive. We learn to drive and at first it can be super overwhelming, but then we get to a certain level of mastery. Maybe we get our driver’s license and now it’s what? Mom, do you need me to run any errands? I could go to the store for you if you want. Do you want me to go pick anything up? Because suddenly driving is this thing that we’ve become competent enough at that it’s fun, but it’s still challenging enough that it lands in that sweet spot of the brain, which is, I kind of want to see if I could get better at this.

And then eventually, you get to be my age and you’ve been driving a really long time, and it’s all you can do to get yourself to get in the car and go to the grocery store because you just don’t want to leave the house, right? Because driving is something that I’ve mastered. It’s not that exciting to me anymore.

And obviously we see this in playing a musical instrument. Maybe you’ve experienced this in your job or your chosen career. We see it over and over again, but this is why we have to keep taking on new things to stay thriving in the way that we are able to.

Okay, so let’s get into the six strategies I have that will help you to do it, help you to overcome what your brain is going to do, which is to not like it and freak out and tell you to quit and tell you people are judging you and all that kind of stuff is normal, healthy human behavior. Here’s how you navigate it.

Number one, be willing to do it poorly. This concept has helped me to get so many things done. Beginning with the book I wrote about five years ago, I was working on this book. I would have parts of it that I felt like were pretty good and other parts I thought, maybe this really isn’t good at all. Who do I think I am? I can barely read a whole book unless somebody on Audible reads it to me. Why do I think I can write a book?

And Elizabeth Gilbert, in her book, Big Magic, I think is where I heard her say this, says, don’t try to write a good book, if this is your first book especially, just write a book and let it be a not a very good book, let it be a crappy book. And that’s the only reason I finished that book. Now I did get some help from some editors and some people that I think in the end we actually did create a really good book, but only because I gave myself permission to write a not very good book.

And I have so many other things I’ve done that never got good, at least the first round of them. For example, my website, my first ever website. Some of you have seen me. I have a picture of it. I show it sometimes when I speak or when we’re talking about marketing and websites. It is not good because I built it on my own. I used a template and sort of copied and pasted and changed it to what I thought I wanted it to look like, but I’m not a web designer. I’m not a graphic designer. It’s not very good.

My first attempts at marketing are not very good and still I was able to get a lot of traction and help a lot of people with that not very good website. Videos, holy cow, when I go back and watch videos that I made in the early days, it’s so cringy. I sound ridiculous, I look ridiculous, the lighting is bad. They’re just not good.

But when I give myself permission to be a beginner, Because beginners aren’t good at it usually. That is how we get better. It’s how we get better. So, when my brain wants to be like, this is not very good, I just go, yeah, because I’m a beginner. But we’re just going to do it anyway, and we’re just going to keep going. And we’re going to post it, or we’re going to share it, or we’re going to put it out into the world. It’s okay if it’s not great.

One day it’ll be much better. But for now, it’s not very good. And that’s okay because not very good still is going to get the job done in most cases. Are you with me?

Okay, the second thing I want you to do is I want you to expect that it will not go according to your plan, but keep going anyway and figure it out. This is a common mistake I see with like my coaches building businesses. They have this idea of what’s gonna happen. First I’m gonna create this course and then I’m gonna put it out and then people are gonna buy it and then I’m gonna offer them coaching and then I’m gonna have people sign up and whatever the plan is, okay? They have it all mapped out. And that’s cool. I want you to have a plan. I want you to go to work with the idea in mind of what you think you’re gonna create.

But then when something doesn’t go according to plan, don’t throw your hands up in frustration and go, nevermind, maybe this isn’t gonna work, maybe I can’t do this. Because it almost never goes according to plan. Just keep going anyway, and then adjust your plan based on what happens.

I had a situation today because I’m taking this course, and I was supposed to have a meeting with a coach, a coach who was gonna coach me, I was gonna be the client, right? And this is a call I booked like a month ago, and I had to kind of make some changes in my schedule to make it happen and everything, and I get online right on time, and I click log into Zoom, and the little wheel is spinning, saying waiting for the host to start the meeting. And 5 minutes goes by, nothing, another 5 minutes goes by. I’m finally like trying to dig around in my email to see like, do I have a way to get a hold of this coach?

And long story short, my internet had disconnected. Right after I logged into the Zoom, it disconnected. That little wheel kept spinning, making me think I was just waiting for the coach. But really, the coach was waiting for me. My internet was down, and so the call didn’t connect. And they marked me as a no-show and moved on. And I was just like, ah, why is this so hard? I’m already trying to learn all this new information, right?

Taking these courses, trying to navigate the course itself and the website and what am I supposed to do and am I meeting deadlines? And then this call that I’ve had set up forever that’s pretty critical to me moving on, now it just didn’t work. It was supposed to be today. And my brain does not like that at all. Right? 

But when I remember, of course, it’s not all gonna go according to plan, Jody. That’s okay. That’s the way of it. These things are gonna happen. We keep going anyway. We adjust. I give myself a minute to complain. Sorry family around me that has to hear me vent and complain. Sorry, husband and sister and, you know, anybody else I’m close to that I’m going to complain to about this. 

I give myself a chance to vent, but then I don’t make it mean, maybe I’m just not meant to do this thing. Maybe I’m just not going to be good at it. It’s like, of course, it doesn’t go according to plan. Then we just keep going. Now what? What’s next? What are we going to do to keep ourselves on track? 

All right, number three, practice a lot of self-care when you are a beginner. Maybe you’re at a new job, or maybe you’ve gone back to work and it’s been a long time since you were at work and everything’s changed and you feel behind and everybody else seems to know what they’re doing and you don’t know what you’re doing. 

Again, I also just joined a mastermind group where a lot of people already know each other because they’ve been masterminding together for years and I don’t really know them and I don’t really know where to find the information I’m supposed to have. There’s a lot of new stuff that I’m learning that’s overwhelming to the brain. 

It’s more important than ever that I practice self-care. Self-care to me means nutrition. I’m drinking a lot of water right now. I’m like, I got to stay hydrated if I’m going to do this stuff. I got to eat decent foods. We tend to do the opposite. We’re like, today was such a hard day. You know what? I deserve a dessert. You can have a dessert if you want, but I’m telling you that won’t make it easier.

I can’t afford to be putting a lot of junk in my body and also feeling crappy. I got to take care of my body during this stressful kind of intense time. Okay, so nutrition, hydration, movement. Like I’m making sure I take time to get my exercise in, to go for a walk, to go to the gym and lift some weights, to do whatever movement I know is necessary to keep me able to access my best self. Sleep. Do not go, you know what, I’m new at this and I need to get good at it, so that’s it. I’m going to put in extra hours and sacrifice things like your nutrition, your hydration, your sleep, your movement. Don’t do that. All of that stuff matters now more than ever.

Fun. I got to have a little fun too. I’m not talking about like taking all day to go do something. I got a lot to get done right now, but I got to have little breaks and moments of things that I do just for fun, laughing with people, watch comedy, or I like to watch funny reels that my family and friends and I will send each other. I got to have a little fun.

I got to have a little balance too, which means when I’m done with a full day of learning a lot of new things or being a beginner, I don’t listen to a self-help book or a business book or any of those kinds of podcasts or YouTube videos. I just listen to music. I have to balance it out a little bit and give my head a break from things like that.

And there are times too, I will say when I’m being a beginner, when maybe I had a plan for the day, but at one point I realized now’s the time to cancel the rest of the day and walk away. If I’m getting really emotionally charged and frustrated and stuck, I will give myself the rest of the day off to regroup, practice some self-care. We’ll come back tomorrow.

Okay, number four, don’t take any of this too seriously, including yourself. That’s where we get really overwhelmed, really stuck, really lost when we’re like, I have to get this done. I have to stay committed. And we start taking it all really seriously. Sometimes you have to take a giant step back and remember that none of this matters. I promise you it doesn’t.

Even if you have a reason, like I gotta make some money, I gotta care for this person in my family, there are many ways to achieve those things. This is the way that you chose, and we can figure this out. I’m not saying to quit, I’m just saying relax and remember there’s lots of solutions to any problem and this is just your brain not liking all the newness, all the overwhelm, all the decisions, all the energy it’s requiring to learn this thing. But we don’t have to take it so seriously. We don’t have to make it so heavy. I promise you, no matter what your reason, taking it really seriously and making it really heavy will make it harder. Keep it light.

Okay, number five. It is so tempting to compare yourself to other people who you are maybe learning from or hoping to be like, or who are already good at this thing that you’re trying to do. It’s just the way of the brain we compare ourselves to others, right? 

So I gave up a while ago on trying to get myself to stop comparing myself to others because it seems to be an innate human thing that pretty much everybody does. So I don’t try to stop it, I just like to balance it with some things to keep in mind. One of them is to keep in mind that I’m comparing my beginning to other people’s middle or end. It’s not really a fair comparison, right?

Second thing that kind of goes along with it is just to remember that pretty much everybody I’m comparing myself to who’s really good at this thing started where I am. They weren’t good at it in the beginning. And even if they got better at it faster than me, it’s kind of irrelevant because they are not me. They don’t have my brain, my experience, my limitations or shortcomings. 

And same is true if I get better at something faster than other people around me. It’s not a fair comparison because we’re not the same person. So really for me, just remembering everybody was like me at one point, everybody was bad at it before they got good at it, helps me to just kind of like temper that part of my brain that wants to compare myself to others and feel bad. There’s no need to feel bad about it.

Number six, manage your mind. You have to talk to your brain more than you listen to your brain. Your brain is going to chatter at you a lot when you’re a beginner. It’s going to try to talk you out of this thing that you’re doing, because remember, it goes against the motivational triad, which is seek pleasure, avoid pain, save energy. Your brain will continue to try to talk you out of it. 

Manage your brain by answering it kindly and gently. I’m not saying push away those thoughts. I’m not saying get mad at them. I’m just saying, hear it out as though it’s a toddler who doesn’t really know what she’s talking about and doesn’t make a lot of sense and doesn’t see the bigger picture, doesn’t have the wiser, more experienced viewpoint that you have, because that’s the reality about that part of your brain.

That’s an important part of your brain. It’s not wrong. It’s not bad. It’s just not seeing the bigger picture like you are with your prefrontal cortex. So you answer it politely. It doesn’t even mean you don’t hear it out a little bit. You just don’t believe everything that it says. Okay. This is the power of coaching. Get some coaching if you need help with this.

I like to remember that anything that we’re going to learn that’s challenging happens in four phases. This is something that when I was a corporate trainer years ago, when I trained salespeople, we used to talk about these four phases of skill development and of learning something new.

And the first phase is what we call unconsciously incompetent, meaning I’m not good at it. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’m unconsciously incompetent. I don’t even know how much there is to know. I don’t even know how bad I am at it. Right? I don’t even understand how complicated and difficult it even is. I might have a guess, but I don’t really understand all the things that I’m going to need to learn and master and practice to get good at it. Unconsciously incompetent. That’s the first phase.

The second phase is what we call consciously incompetent. This is where everything gets really real and we start getting glimpses of how difficult this is and how much we have to learn and master. And this often feels a lot worse than the first phase. Remember, the brain wants to save energy and not do hard things.

So it’s going to go, this is going to take forever. I’m never going to get good at this. I didn’t realize I was going to have to learn all these other things too. Okay, consciously incompetent. That’s when a lot of people quit, but not you. You’re going to keep going into the third phase, which is called consciously competent.

So this means we’re becoming competent, but only if we stay conscious. If we really focus on it, and we access the knowledge that we have with our prefrontal cortex. We have to consciously pay attention and then we can do it at least some of the time. This is when it starts to get more fun. This is really rewarding to our brains because we’re having some wins, we’re having some successes, and we start seeing that we can do it, although it still requires some energy and effort and attention.

And then we move into phase four, which is unconsciously competent. In other words, mastery. We start to be able to delegate a lot of it to the lower brain, to automated processes, to habits or behaviors that we can do without thinking about it. Like the way I type on my keyboard. If I close my eyes, I could not recite to you the letters on the keyboard, but my fingers just know. My fingers know where they are and I can type really fast.

My son, my oldest son types even faster than me. We like to have timed typing tests sometimes. That’s really fun for us. And he’s faster than me. But I couldn’t tell you where the letters are. I’m unconsciously competent at typing and many other things. And so are you, my friend, and you will get to that phase and then it will be boring. And then you will need to go find something else to challenge yourself.

This is how you be a beginner. It’s okay to be bad at it. It’s okay to ask for help. Here’s the final thing I want to say. We’re so worried about what other people are going to think, right? The reality is other people like to look and feel like an expert. We do. And what we like in other people, what we tend to be attracted or drawn to in other people is authenticity. We are not drawn to perfection and expertise. I mean, we might respect expertise.

We might admire it, but we actually are not drawn to people that are just good at everything. That’s not real anyway. But what we’re drawn to is people who are real and authentic.

So we might hold somebody in really high regard if they’re really good at something, we might respect that. But if they also were able to go, can you help me with this? I don’t know how to do this thing. And they let you be the expert at times. That’s ideal to our brains. Okay?

So don’t be afraid to be honest, to be vulnerable. That’s where true connection happens. That’s where our best relationships happen. That’s humility as well, right? And that’s part of being a beginner.

And you don’t have to make it mean that there’s something wrong with you because there’s not. Not knowing how to do things doesn’t make there, mean there’s something wrong with you. It’s so obvious when I say it out loud, but so many of you don’t understand that. I know because I coach on this all the time. 

Be willing to be a beginner and your life will become extraordinary. Thanks for joining me today, everyone. I’ll see you next week on another episode.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: jodymoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s jodymoore.com/freecoaching.