Sucking is the secret to mastery
May 03, 2022
When was the last time you really sucked at something? This is what we're going to talk about today, and I cannot wait to show you how this is the shift you need to make if you want to get better at your business. Hey there, and welcome back to The Quantum Course Creator Podcast, Jess here, and today I want to talk about one of my favorite topics. I love sucking at things. And I know that sounds really silly. But truly one of my favorite things in life in general, is learning new things.
I just love learning new things. But oftentimes, I find that we as people are afraid to learn new things, or not so much afraid to learn new things, but afraid to be bad at new things. So, what often happens is that we do something once we experience the pain of not being very good at it, and then we never do it again. Whether it's cross stitching, or lunging, or starting a podcast or whatever it might be - if you are always afraid of doing something again, or not doing if you're not doing anything at all, because you're afraid you're not going to be very good at it, you're going to live a very limiting life. You're going to have a very limited business and a very limited perspective on the world. So in today's episode, I'm going to talk about this whole concept of being willing to suck at something, and how that can really impact how you show up in your business, in the growth that you see in both your business and in your life.
Take me for example; about five or six years ago, though, maybe more now I am really bad at time, I decided to learn how to drive a stick shift. Now this wasn’t out of a passion project or interest in learning something new - my family was down to one car. We had one car, which was my husband's stick shift, and I didn't know how to drive it. So I decided, if we're gonna have this car, I need to learn how to drive it. And so at the age of 27-28, I learned how to drive a stick shift. And if you don't know how to drive a stick shift, then you are exactly where I was back then. And if you do know how to drive a stick shift, you know that it's not that easy to learn. It is not something that comes naturally, there's a lot of moving parts driving a stick shift is not at all like driving an automatic car, and it really is a learning process, and unfortunately, the only way to learn how to drive a stick shift is to get in the driver's seat, and drive.
So my poor husband had the job of teaching me how to drive this car. And it took me a lot of time in parking lots, it took some time around our neighborhood, it took a lot of practice, it took stalling it took getting honked at. But at the end of the day, I learned how to drive a stick shift and I actually became very good at driving the stick shift. One of my favorite moments of driving this car was when I drove it to downtown Denver, which is a pretty busy downtown area, and I parallel parked a stick shift car in downtown. At that moment, I was like “I have made it I have mastered driving a stick shift.” and I cannot tell you how proud it made me feel to master that right to go from I have no idea how this works to I can parallel park, a manual auto motor or manual transmission car in downtown.
The first time you do anything, you're going to suck at it. And I almost feel like the more I suck at something, the more I want to get good at it. It's almost like this personal challenge now. And over the years, I've gotten good at some really cool things. I’ve learned Spanish, I’ve nurtured a sourdough starter, I’ve taken on clients that felt way out of my comfort zone. But at the end of the day, I’m willing to take the plunge and embrace the suck. And just the whole notion of being willing to suck at something is the key to becoming a master of that thing. And I think that we all could stand to get out of our comfort zones and be willing to suck at something a little bit more often because it really isn't those experiences of sucking, that we learn the things that are really going to enrich our life.
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