Learning Something New

This year for the first time in my life I made New Year resolutions. One of them was to have a thirty-day challenge every month. These was a mixture of fun things, and some not-so-fun things. To make myself stick with it, I decided to start with something fun. I had to learn to juggle 3 balls, the aim being to be able to do it at least for thirty seconds (trust me it is a lot!).

My reason for wanting to learn to juggle was a decade-old fascination with it. After the ball had had quite a few close calls with the TV and it had hit my nose close to a 100times, I did it! But this post is not about how I learnt to juggle, though that would be an interesting post. It is about what I learnt by learning to juggle. Knowing how to juggle didn’t add any real value to my life, but it did teach me a few very important lessons. Which is why I believe learning new skills can be extremely useful.

We learn to believe in ourself – Whenever we want to learn something or look at someone who knows how to do something which fascinates us, there is a small voice telling us that we will never be able to do it. This voice gives us many reasons like we are too old to learn the skill, we aren’t smart enough… The list goes on. When you start learning something initially you pick it up really quickly and then comes the dip. It is during the dip that our fears and excuses seem to come true. If we give up during this time, our fears turn out to be true, but if we continue to try, we are blessed with a eureka moment. The eureka moment is the part where the learning curve is once again pointing upwards. I never believed that I could learn to juggle, but when I did it filled me with a confidence. It made me realise learning was not that hard and is fun for the most part.

We learn to grit – The dip in the learning curve is extremely uncomfortable and frustrating. To get through this we grit our teeth and fight our insecurities along with the discomfort. Though we might think that only a few gifted have this ability, we all do. Look back at when you were an infant, you learned to walk, you picked yourself up every time you fell instead of giving up. Did you ever think “Oh! Walking isn’t for me”? Learning to Grit is extremely important in my opinion. It makes the challenges life throws at us look easier and we know that we will give them a good fight.

We learn the value of patience – Once again go back to the time when you were an infant. Did you learn to walk in a day or a week? It took months of hard work, and not all babies learn to walk in the same amount of time. So, don’t expect to learn or succeed in a day or two, some things might even take years, and just because your best friend did it in two weeks does not mean you will too. It might take you longer or if you are lucky a shorter amount of time. It might seem like you are never going to learn, but I assure that will never be the case (unless of course all you are doing is thinking about learning).

It’s fun – Despite the struggle and frustration, it is fun and is more fulfilling than watching a movie in your free time (at least most of the time).

You can flaunt it– Okay, this might not be a real benefit, but it’s fun to flaunt when you can do something others around you can’t. It gives a little boost to my teen ego😂.

That said, what is the next skill you plan to learn?