Being A Beginner

begin /bɪˈɡɪn/ to perform or undergo the first part of (an action or activity)

Bismillah.

A beginner. A romanticised idea for most of us.

“Yeah, I would love to do something new, but I need to plan it out first.”

“It’s too hard, too consuming, I’ll fail.”

“I’m afraid that I won’t get the results that I’ve set for myself.”

“I want it to be perfect, I need it to be perfect.”

And many more excuses for us to not begin the things that we wanted to begin. Sometimes, we are afraid to start, because we have already placed an expectation or standard on ourselves before we even started. We are too focused on achieving something in the things we started, and when we fail to fulfill the expectations, especially our own, we are easily demotivated.

Of course, we love the idea of starting something new, but do we have the passion to do the work for it? This is the common major mistake that we would never fail to do. We are so infatuated and committed to the idea of starting something new, but when it comes to the actual work of starting and maintaining the process, we are not as committed as we thought we would be. The art of starting something new is that, in addition to indulging in the idea of what we want to do or to have, we need to ask ourselves, what are we willing to sacrifice for it. We have to think of the challenges, and our strength to overcome those problems. Would we remain strong, or would we fall off and abandon the things we chose to start completely, without seeing the result?

And the beautiful thing about being a beginner is, it’s okay to not be perfect. Yes, there will be some expectations here and there, from the people surrounding you, or maybe just from yourselves, and there will be goals that you would want to achieve in starting it, but you don’t have to always fulfill them either. It is okay to not be okay at something, as long as you keep trying hard to get better at it. Those people who are successful, those role models, they are beginners at something too, and yes, they have experienced failure too, maybe even countless of them. And those failures are what drove them to become better, and the best at what they do. Being imperfect is the first step to achieve perfection. Because, being imperfect will show you your flaws, and by fixing those flaws, you can grow into someone amazing.

And to talk about the insecurities of not being perfect, who cares anyway? Why do we need to centralize our own life by what other people would expect of us? Living in the fear of society’s perception would undoubtedly make us timid and small, almost unexciting and mundane. Deep down, who would want to live a life that is so constricted? We often wanted to do things, and almost every time, we are ready to strive for it. However, we didn’t because of the fear that we have, which ends up with us mourning in self-pity while watching others achieve the things that we would want to achieve. The cycle goes on and on. We plan, ready to strive for it, only to be defeated by the fears that we choose to feed instead of killing. If we aren’t that much of cowards, life would be so much different, so vibrant. Who cares if you look like a fool? Who cares if you look ridiculous? It’s 2019, you do you. People will hate you, or people will love you. Either way, it will be fun to experience something so vivid, to prove that you are not caged by society’s standards. It’s the processes and memories that count, not just the end product of it.

And of course, we always tell ourselves that we don’t have enough time, or we often procrastinate to actually do the thing. We would always find excuses, and we often tell ourselves that the time isn’t perfect for us to actually start new things. This is untrue, isn’t it? The right time to start is always the present. Why are we so caught up with the things we can’t control, like the past or the future? Why worry about such things? The only thing that we can always control is the present, which is right now. Then, why are we holding back ourselves from doing the things that we would want to begin right now? If we say that we are not prepared, will life wait for us? No, it won’t. Life is an opportunity, hence if we don’t jump headfirst into the things that piqued our interest, we are selling our life short. Life is too short and too precious to be wasted away with fear and to be experienced in the mundane monotones of black, grey, and white. Life is supposed to be an experiment, not a masterpiece.

So it doesn’t need to be perfect or curated to follow a certain path. Permit ourselves to do things. Find joy in doing something, don’t just try to be an expert all the time. Accept that we may not be good on the first try. Just try, and put our work into that thing until we become so good that we can call ourselves experts.

And the other thing is, we keep putting ourselves into such shallow boxes and categorizations, such as on our limited skills, etc. Hence, we often felt like we can’t get out of those boxes, being caged inside, when instead they are the barriers that we, ourselves have created. Why stay in the lane of who we should be, rather than exploiting our massive minds and start to become who we could actually be if we started new things? The thing about life is, it is not fixed. We can change our own stories in life, we can control the characters, we can control our plots in the stories. We are the author of our own stories, then why are we only settling for the bare minimum? Why not make it so great, and so fun, so that we would remember and treasure our own stories and life more?

Trying out new things can create so much flavor in our lives. And to try out new things is to gain knowledge about ourselves so that we can finally learn to appreciate and love ourselves more. Yes, it can be uncomfortable to be out of our comfort zones, to not know a lot of things, to not know about the outcomes of the things that we wanted to try, but those little actions of stepping out of our comfort zones is what will make us grow as individuals, unique and irreplaceable. Those are the things that will improve our characters whom we have thought to always be imperfect. It gets easier along with time, but first, we need to be able to take that initial step.

Self-doubt will come eventually but why do we have to entertain it? If we constantly say that we are going to fail, then we are already attracting the failure to ourselves. We are what we ask for, and we are what we verbalize, so why are we throwing such negative words to ourselves? Don’t let our insecurities control us, instead, exercise control over it. We are in charge, not them. Even if it turns right that we aren’t fit for the things we are trying out, those efforts would become our experiences and memories that would bring joy to us. It’s just another story to tell, and another lesson learnt.

At the end of the line, do not take life as seriously. Life is supposed to be full of fun and experiences, so don’t waste that away with our fear of stepping outside of our comfort zones. It is okay to try and fail. It is okay to not fulfill the expectations, either from others or from ourselves. Give ourselves a chance to do things that we want to do. And we need to actually start accepting that we are, in fact, beginners. Because when we have the confidence that we have already mastered anything in life, we are concluding that we have nothing more to learn and that is not true. There is always something to be learnt, and to learn those things is to become a beginner.