How to overcome emotional obstacles in learning new things as adults
Learning isn’t just about procuring the right source of information, going through the resources and the boredom of repetition or memorization. It can be an emotionally laborious process. It requires the courage to be the person who is not in the know.
I’m always protecting my self-image by only trying things I know I can handle.
In the back of my mind, I’ve always had this inherent belief that I wasn’t meant to do certain things, such as gymnastics, mathematics, science, IT, team sports, fashion — just to name a few.
I was told that it’s best to stick with what you know because not knowing something is shameful and embarrassing. Kids that continuously tried to achieve something they weren’t initially good at were presented as a cautionary tale for pretentiousness in a sense of — who do they think they are? They would be either laughed at or pitied for struggling.
Ergo, whenever I tried something new, I was expected to either know it instinctively or it was assumed that I never will. My family put a lot of stock in the idea of being gifted for some things and irredeemably useless for others and they would see this…
