S5E21: How can we make ‘having a go’ feel safer?
Full transcript:
Good morning, happy Monday and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway. And today, if you are one of those people who, like me, identifies as the exact opposite of the new-and-shiny hunters, I have a question for you.
What could you to do make having a go feel safer?
Because there is so much information out there, and so many memes and so many discussions, about how to resist the beckoning of the new and shiny. But, and I know I’ve talked about this before, that isn’t me. I hate doing new things. Learning new things, love it. Reading about new topics, wonderful! Acquiring new skills, hate it. It took me forever to learn to record and edit my podcast. It took me forever and a lot of stress to build my first website. As soon as I don’t know how to do something, I hit the wall of awful.
And that’s because the biggest thing that I still have to learn, and I’m working on it but it is a long road, is how to make having a go feel safe. How to let curiosity in without immediately trampling it with stress, and how to feel a bit lost and okay at the same time.
I don’t have the answers to this, but I do have some questions that might help you out.
Can you dive in at the deep end? Or do you need to have the task fully mapped out before you start? And here I’m just talking about the immediate task in front of you, not the entire journey from now until 2030. For me, one of the things I have found really helpful with new things is to have every tiny step as a separate item on my list that I can tick off, even if I’m adding them as I go. Is it the same for you?
Are you happy to experiment, or do you prefer to follow step-by-step? I don’t like tinkering. I don’t like “just seeing what this button does” and I’m not the kind of person who is happy to “just figure things out” if there is an option to follow instructions or a manual or a course. And yet in a parallel universe six feet away from me, that’s exactly what my partner does. He doesn’t want to follow courses if he can just play around with things. Newness doesn’t stress him out, being told what to do in a rigid framework stresses him out. He likes the feeling of discovery.
Are you scared that this new thing is a risk? Do you need to have a quick risk assessment first? What are the risks? Overwhelm? Embarrassment? Bringing up issues from your schooldays? If it helps, take a couple of minutes to write down the most pressing risks and, and this is important, some steps you’re going to take to mitigate them. But this is a risk assessment, and not just a brainstorm of catastrophe, so keep it short, keep it objective, and look for the solutions too. How can you modify the activity or the task to make it feel less risky, to add more steps so each individual step is more manageable, or increase the support that you give yourself or get from other people?
Is it easier with other people?
One of the reasons I love coworking, in person or online, is that, even when the people around me are working on completely different things to me, having them around me and that feeling of solidarity makes it easier to try new things. Just the fact that they’re there and we can check in every hour or every 45 minutes seems to cut through some of the procrastination and some of the overthinking. And it doesn’t have to be coworking – a friend or classmate, being in the library, having someone to hold you accountable through instant messaging, it doesn’t matter. But that feeling of support is invaluable.
So if you’re trying something new this week, I just want to wish you the best of luck, and to say that I would be more than happy to hold you accountable all this week! Send me a message to tell me what you’re doing on or leave a comment on today’s Episode on a Post-it on Instagram at @teawithemily and I’ll check in with you throughout the week.
And if you’d like some accountability with some of the most creative, multipassionate and mission-driven language learners I know, consider joining my Patreon and cowork or costudy with us every Monday afternoon UK time, Monday morning Eastern time in the Creative Space. It’s a great way to get things done and have three hours ringfenced every week to work on the things that really matter to you with tons of encouragement, and it costs less than a cup of coffee per week. Check out my Patreon, it’s in the shownotes, and look for the “Out of the Fog” tier.
Good luck, be brave, and I will see you tomorrow.