When Was the Last Time You Were a Beginner?

Last Friday night, Kim and I decided to do something a little different for date night.

Instead of dinner and a movie, we signed up for a paint-and-sip class at a local wine bar.

To put this in perspective, I hadn't picked up a paintbrush in about 40 years.

Walking into the class, I looked around and immediately realized I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

Oddly enough, that was the best part.

Somewhere along the way, adults stop putting themselves in situations where they might not be good at something.

We gravitate toward what we know.

What we're comfortable doing.

What we're confident doing.

And while there's nothing wrong with that, I think we lose something along the way.

As founders, we're constantly asking our teams to embrace uncertainty.

We tell them to experiment.

To learn.

To fail fast.

To try things they've never done before.

Yet many of us stop doing those same things in our own lives.

The truth is, being a beginner is uncomfortable.

You make mistakes.

You compare yourself to people who have done it for years.

You wonder if you're doing it "right."

But that's also where growth begins.

By the end of the night, our paintings weren't going to hang in a museum.

But that wasn't the point.

We laughed.

We learned something new.

We spent a few hours completely disconnected from work.

And we created a memory we'll both remember far longer than another dinner reservation.

It reminded me that you don't have to be good at something for it to be good for you.