From the course: Building Resilience

Learn something new

From the course: Building Resilience

Learn something new

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- A few years ago I decided that I needed to learn a new language, so I took up Spanish. Wow, what a humbling experience that was. I felt as if I was back in first grade squeezing my brain to take in all this new information, while not retaining as much as I wanted to. It was a humbling experience, and a frustrating one at times. Learning a new skill does a few things for you. It stretches you outside of your comfort zone. It pushes you to create new brain paths whether the skill is mental or physical. It creates opportunities to fail and go back and try again. And it builds resilience. Whether it's learning Spanish, maneuvering a motorcycle, cooking, archery, graphic design, all of these new skills will raise your resilience threshold. You will not be good at it at first. You will have feelings of incompetence, and question your motivation. Yes, these are all experiences that will help you in the long run. Remember that resilience is about bouncing back, diving back into the tough situation and trying again. You can say that learning a new skill helps you learn how to fail. Skilled athletes, like basketball legend Michael Jordan, saw the value of failing. When Jordan was asked about his secret success formula he said, I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. "I've lost almost 300 games, 26 times, I've been trusted "to take the game winning shot and I missed. "I've failed over and over and over again in my life, "and that's why I succeeded." I'm not asking you to be like Michael Jordan, but to give yourself safe opportunities to practice something new, and learn how to fail in the process. It will all pay off in the long run.

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