You Don't Have to be a Professional Everything

• • The golf course and I became friends this summer. Well, I should rephrase: I saw the golf course often this summer. Some days we were civil acquaintances, most days we were unpleasant enemies, and occasionally, we were friends. Needless to say, when one (me) has spent approximately zero days golfing in one’s entire life, it’s not always fun when you first start swinging the club. In fact, for the first few months of the spring and summer, I decided it simply wasn’t worth the effort of being so bad at something, for so long, only to have a potential shot at just maybe being less bad so people wouldn’t always have to wait for me to finish a hole. I would hang out on the golf cart with my husband while he golfed, but wouldn’t touch a club. Have you ever wanted to start something new, whether a hobby, project, or an idea at work, but felt pressured to be good at it before you can even begin? Maybe you want to start crafting, but don’t see yourself being the hustling entrepreneur selling candles and crochet projects at the local craft fair. Maybe you’re wanting to pick up the guitar again after letting the dust collect on the case for years, but you’re just never going to be really good at it. Or, maybe you’re like me and golfing, and you’re convincing yourself it’s not worth doing if you’ll never be good enough to win even the local charity golf scramble with your buddies. I’m beginning to notice a trend among those of us younger folks (and older ones, too) who have spent most of our lives pursuing things we’re good at. In school, we were constantly asked about our favorite subjects, what we were good at, and what we wanted to do with our lives. In our extracurriculars, we were encouraged to drop the things we didn’t have a natural talent for in order to make room for the activities we excelled at. In the workplace, we feel a high level of pressure to perform, so of course we choose a path where we have confidence we can do exactly that. The trend I’m noticing? We’ve taken this to the extreme in every area of our lives, refusing even hobbies where we can’t be a top performer. If we can’t take a fast track to excellence, we won’t even bother trying. “What’s wrong with trying to be good at everything I do?” you may ask. I don’t know that there’s something inherently wrong with this: there certainly are places where we should be giving our best, and recognizing when to step down because someone else’s talents are best suited to take on the task. I’m not suggesting if you studied engineering you need to make a mid-life career change and start teaching art and music. There is value, I think especially in our working lives, to do what we’re best at. Yet, even at work and certainly across other areas of our lives, I think there are a couple of reasons why we should seriously re-evaluate our propensity to only participate if we’ll perform.

1. We’re missing out on the fullness of what life has to offer. The first part of the summer, I convinced myself I was having just as much fun on the golf course as anyone actually golfing. Yet, when a couple of my friends finally convinced me to golf a round with them, I realized it could actually be even more fun to participate, even if I wasn’t playing well. Then, the (very few) times I actually did hit a solid drive or sink a putt, it became abundantly clear how much fun this could be. Again, it wasn’t just about the golfing: it was time with friends, with my husband, and my coworkers that I otherwise would have missed. When we fear doing something we’re not good at, we close the door to a lot of things in life, because as much as we hate to admit it, we’re all only really good at a few things. The rest of the things out there, we’re either going to be pretty average at or pretty bad at, and that doesn’t mean they’re not worth doing.
2. We’re conditioning ourselves to be increasingly unable to handle failure. If we are constantly curating our activities to only include what we excel in, we are actively training ourselves to run from failure. While it feels good in the moment, it can cause us to be overly cautious and unwilling to take risks—even in those realms where we do perform well—or it can limit us when we are presented with a new opportunity. There’s a leadership cliche that goes something like “if you’re not growing, you’re dying,” and you can’t grow if you only do things you’re already good at. You don’t add pounds to your squat or bench by lifting the same weight every week; you add pounds by progressively adding more weight or reps. We can do this in many areas of our lives by trying something now and then which you don’t have a very high level of confidence in your ability to do. If you find you can do it, sweet! Now you know your abilities stretch farther than you knew before. If you find you can’t do it, cool! Now, if you can keep going, you’ve developed another layer of resilience. Thanks for reading The Next Step! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. While I’ve found this to be most obvious in the hobbies I select, it’s applicable everywhere. If you stretch yourself at work, taking on side projects to test abilities you haven’t tried before, you’ll be better prepared for what might come next, and you’ll know yourself more deeply. If you take on a new chore around the house you historically haven’t done because it doesn’t come naturally to you, you may find you can serve your family in a whole new way. What I’m getting at here is this: you don’t need to be Steve Jobs to be a little innovative at work. You don’t need to be Gordan Ramsay to make dinner for your family. You don’t need to be Jimi Hendrix to enjoy picking up a guitar now and then. And you certainly don’t need to be Tiger Woods to have some fun on the golf course. Journal Prompt of the WeekWhat’s one thing you’ve held yourself back from doing because you don’t think you’ll be the best at it? How can you get started this week? Leave a comment