The power of a beginner’s mind.
What if failure wasn’t always a bad thing, what if it could be a GREAT thing?!
This week in our stress relief series we’re talking about the power of a beginner’s mind and how it helps us release performance pressure and stress.
A great way to step into the beginner’s mind is to learn something new that’s just for fun, meaning you have no attachment to it as part of your identity. When we’re in the first stages of learning a fun new skill, sport or hobby, there’s very little pressure to be good at it or “perform” it well. In fact, being bad at it, or failing at it, is almost expected. Why?
Because failure is a natural part of the learning process.
We know this intuitively and have experienced it often, ever since childhood. For example, it’s how we learned to ride bikes or cook our favorite foods. We learned from what didn’t work and eventually became confident bike riders and home chefs.
Once we can really embrace the natural process of failure, innovation, and learning, it can be really fun! We get the chance to open our minds up to creativity, exploration, and healthy risk, without getting worried about getting things right every time. That’s our beginner’s mind.
The beginner’s mind is about staying open to growth and learning by accepting failure as a positive tool, instead of a bad thing.
When we’re learning something new that’s just for fun, we have a great opportunity to explore our beginner’s mind and release pressure and stress. It gives us a safe space to fail, get creative and grow without the consequences of deadlines or performance goals.
So how can you tap into the beginner’s mind in your own life?
Great question! The answer is pretty simple: give yourself a fun new challenge and a safe space to learn it in. Eventually, you can develop your beginner’s mind and carry it with you through all life’s challenges, but for now, let’s focus on learning something new that’s just for fun.
There are endless possibilities here. Maybe you’ve always wanted to learn watercolor painting, how to bake bread, how to play the guitar, or how to rock climb. Pick something you can learn without getting bogged down by how you think you should be performing. And then, dive in! Start exploring what it feels like to have fun with failure. Let yourself embrace it as a positive tool that invites you to get creative and solve challenges with an open, beginner’s mind.
Whatever skill, sport, or hobby you choose, take some time to reflect on your learning experience and how it might feel different from your job, your primary sport or any other performance-related activities in your life.
Here are a few questions you might reflect on:
How does keeping an open beginner’s mindset give you the opportunity to release expectations or pressure and the stress that comes with it?
How does it feel to give yourself permission to experiment and fail, to have failure be a positive thing?
How does it feel to be curious and creative, knowing you have space to just explore what you’re learning?
Have fun with this! We hope tapping into your beginner’s mind will help you release stress and reduce pressure in your life.
