You have heard of Beginner's Mind? Approach an activity as if you were seeing and experiencing it for the first time? I like this idea, especially given my fear of the brain's propensity to create patterns, and try and fit new information into a framework it already knows. Having a beginner's mind is not an easy thing! But what I want to write about is different, although perhaps a close cousin: beginner's heart.
I remember watching my stepson, year's ago, playing a new Star Wars game on the computer. He'd be in the fighter pilot's seat, and again and again he'd crash and burn. I knew this because this abrupt ending was followed by a loud "game over" announcement. I'd hear him laughing, and he'd start another game and another. He didn't mind the crash and burn, nor did he seem to mind how many people were in the room witnessing his humiliation. I thought at the time, comparing children to adults, "If this was me, I'd probably have practiced the game in private so I could develop at least so rudimentary level of skill before I let myself be visible before others with my first attempts."
Failing in public is new for me, but I am getting a lot of practice at it. I am learning the marvelous art of digital graphic facilitation, recording conversations with words and images on an IPad during virtual meetings. I have done a fair amount of learning in the privacy of my own home, but ultimately the only way to practice this skill is to go live, and record meetings while others are seeing your work, changing moment by moment, on the screen. It is not very pretty . . . not yet. There is a lot of "crash and burn" involved.
Why do I face this public embarrassment? I do it because I love the work. I feel like I've been given my first set of paints and brushes. I mix colors. I design a canvas. I reach for images that speak beyond the participants' words. It is easy to risk embarrassment, because I am loving what I do. Yes, I have a beginner's mind, and I approach this work with curiosity, learning something new each time I open up my digital palette. It is my beginner's HEART that really makes the difference, however.
It is because I have a beginner's heart that the work is fresh and exciting. It is because I have a beginner's heart that I am willing to offer this work up to others, even in a less-than-perfect form. It is because I have a beginner's heart that I am willing to seek feedback and try again and again.
The silver linings from my days sheltering-in-place have been many, but I think this has been the greatest gift of all. I could no longer do what I do so easily, facilitate group meetings, in public settings, so I had to evolve. I am not writing on whiteboards or flip charts, but on a magical pad, but I am finding a new way to do what I did, but differently. This work with colors and images is opening me, transforming the way I do my work and the way I see the world. It has broken down my 30 years of professional experience and transformed it, morphed it into a new form.
Beginner's Heart has helped me let go of the safe and familiar ground of my professional role, and in that letting go, a new world is opening up. Let's not forget that the French word for heart, coeur, has the same root as our word "courage." Beginner's Heart gives us the courage to risk, to try our our wings, to soar. What beginning awaits on your horizon? Sometimes, to see the new beginning, we have to quit looking over our shoulder at what we have left behind. This takes courage. There is a letting go before a letting come. This sort of leap takes a Beginner's Heart.
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