„Comparison is the thief of joy.“
Theodore Roosevelt said this a long time ago, but this quote is as relevant today as it was while he was still alive. Thanks to the internet we are constantly faced with hundreds or even thousands of people we can compare our own lifes to. While it’s nice to stay in contact with your friends all around the world in realtime, it can also put a lot of pressure on anyone of us. We see all the great things people post online like their beautiful drawing they created, the scenic picture they have taken or the dress they sewed for themselfs. But what we maybe forget to keep in mind sometimes is those people perhaps didn’t show their beginnings in their craft. Most people start a new hobby or skill as a complete beginner without knowing what exactly they have to learn to progress and get good with it. Read further if you want to know, why it’s important to let yourself be a beginner when learning a new skill.
Every master once was a beginner
In order to be good at any skill you have to practice again and again. Mastering a craft requires to start with the basics. You can’t run a marathon without knowing how to walk first. Although you see all those people with amazing skills online or meet them in real life, every one of them started as a beginner just like you did. Being aware of this gives you the oppertunity to embrace all of the steps along your way to mastery. Every step you take is equally as important, like walking up a stair. Without the first step of starting to learn something new you can’t reach the last step getting to the top. This takes a lot of patience and ?perseverance? But it’s the only way to progress. The worst thing you could do is letting yourself get discouraged because somebody else is making it seem easy. Remind yourself that you don’t have to be at their level in this moment because you started at another time at a different starting point in your life. This isn’t a race and your only competition should be your past self. When comparing your progress you should be looking at yourself and not others. Maybe they are more talented than you or they can practice more than you. Maybe even have a teacher to help them while you’re doing it on your own. All those things aren’t within your control and make comparison unfair.
Set realistic expectations
Conciously allowing yourself to be a beginner let’s you set realistic expectations of what your outcome should look like. For example your first drawing won’t be something you would show at an exhibition. But it also doesn’t have to. You don’t have to be as good as anybody else immidiately And usualy no one expects you to be except yourself. You created non-realistic expectations of what your progress should look like. Just because you make a mistake doesn’t mean you are not capable of learning this skill or that you can’t get good at it. It only means you tried and made a mistake. Nothing wrong with it. Look at it in retrospective and analyse what went wrong or how you can improve to prevent the same mistake from happening again. That’s how progress is done.
Or maybe you didn’t make a mistake but somebody showed you a more efficient way of doing things. So you made it work with what you knew at that point. Well done! That’s something you can be proud of. You are not supposed to know it all in the beginning. That’s what it makes it so exciting. You don’t know what you have to learn next and how your progress will look and feel like. It doesn’t matter if it is perfect or anybody is more capable. You don’t know how many times the other person wasn’t able to make it work or how many tries they needed to get to this level. Everybody has their own journey when it comes to learning a new skill with their very own little steps they have to take to get to mastering the skill.Therefore everybodys progress Looks different from yours and you shouldn’t be comparing yourself to them because the only thing it does is put pressure on you and set wrong expectations which can lead to discouragement and stop you from progressing.
Enjoy every step while learning
Expanding your skillset requires you to be patient and work on yourself constantly. Every little step you take takes you closer to your goal like walking up a massive set of stairs. But you shouldn’t focus on the final Goal, instead embrace every tiny progress you undergo. Celebrate it and pad yourself on the back for it so you can create an ongoing reward loop for making progress. This will motivate you to keep going and make it fun to learn something new. Having fun while exploring new things is more important than being fast while doing it. Fun will create consistency which leads to massive progress over time. Following the rule of 100 dedicating 18 minutes/day (100 hours/year) to learning a specific skill will take you to the top 5% within one year. Consistency is the key to mastery because mastery is no final state. There is always something new to explore, new techniques being developed. Having fun will keep you exploring while being good and this way will make you even better. One little step at a time. There is no delivery date for your skills, no universal schedule you have to obey. Take your time and enjoy learning.
Are you learning a new skill right now? Tell me which one in the comments down below.
Until next time,
JustMeOnline
JustMeOnline 
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