I keep seeing the phrase, “Be brave enough to suck at something new,” popping up all over my social media feeds. I love the sentiment — but I struggle with the application.
My not-so-deep dark secret: I’m rarely brave. In fact, I barely know brave.
For me, brave is a deadbeat emotion: entirely unreliable and utterly inconsistent. Brave seldom shows up when I need or expect it to. When brave finally does arrive on the scene, it’s generally a sloppy, emotional burst that swings from all fired up to completely fizzled out every 46 seconds. It’s messy and exhausting.
We Can Stop Waiting For Brave’s Arrival if We Can Just Find Curious
Don’t get me wrong — I believe in bravery. I know it exists because I have seen it firsthand. I have even had a few personal moments where I somehow managed to appropriately steel myself long enough to rise up, and over, and beyond something unwelcome.
But I’ve also got a worry streak a mile wide; first developed as a child by exceptionally risk-averse parents and further nurtured into adulthood by far too many Dateline episodes.
My point: If I had to wait for brave’s arrival to step out and suck at something new, I’d be waiting forever.
But curious? Curious, I’ve got down cold. The older I get, the faster I can work up to curious.
I’ve lived long enough and have navigated through enough to know with authority there’s just no putting life in a box or no telling what God has planned next. And I am just so nosy — I can’t wait to see how it all shakes out. So, getting myself to curious is usually enough to drown out the negative voices, outweigh the fear of failure, and dial down all the “what ifs” to take a chance on being even exceptionally bad at something new.
Case in point — here is an actual picture of me being really curious about cross-country skiing for the very first time ever last year:
And there at the top of the pic are a few of my people cheering me on (aka laughing their smug little faces off) as I suck at something new.
Today’s Soft Never
Let’s Soft Never the belief that we can never do something new or scary or uncomfortable until we are brave enough. Waiting for brave can keep us in an indefinite holding pattern and ultimately missing out on everything God has planned for us. Forget brave. All we have to be is just curious enough to see that comes next.
Connect With The Soft Never Team
When was the last time you sucked at something new? Tell us about it in the comments below or connect with us here to share the details.
