When was the last time you did something for the first time?

Just think about it for a moment.

How many of us try something new on a regular basis, or even occasionally?

If you’re anything like me I’ll bet your weekly routine is pretty predictable.  Mine certainly is: clients and supervision sessions on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays; clients in London on Wednesdays;, food shopping and housework and emails and admin on a Thursday; watching TV or scrolling through Facebook in the evenings…. We visit the same places on day trips, eat the same dinners, wear the same clothes.  The occasional school event or children’s birthday party might get added into the mix from time to time, but on the whole it’s the same, week in, week out.

A big part of me likes that – I’ve always enjoyed routine.  It feels safe and comfortable.  Familiar.  It’s just that a tiny part of me is desperate for something more, something that strays a bit away from the ordinary, away from the ‘sameness’ of it all.  I want a bit of adventure.

Don’t get me wrong – I love my life.  Every client and supervisee is different, so my work life has a huge amount of variety.  And life with my husband and girls is certainly never dull – I really do try to make the most of every single day because we’ve had way too many reminders recently that life is short so you’ve got to get as much out of it as you possibly can.

I just never do anything… new.  Or exciting.  Or different.

My middle daughter, a self proclaimed tomboy, is full of contradictions.  A girl who loves to wear dresses (as long as they’re not pink) and yet is always covered in bruises and scrapes.  She would rather play football with the boys than dolls with her sisters and yet at the same time loves to put hairclips in my hair.  I love that about her – she’s got the best of both worlds, just by being her.

She turned seven years old a couple of weeks ago and one of her presents was a skateboard.

Needless to say, she was absolutely thrilled and instantly wanted to try it out.

 

So she changed out of her party dress into leggings and a top, pulled on the knee and elbow pads, strapped her helmet firmly down on her head and strode purposefully out of the front door.

She was a bit wobbly at first, and clung on to her Daddy for support.

Until eventually she got brave enough to try it on her own.

She fell a couple of times, landing on the only part of her that wasn’t protected of course (her bum!), the skateboard shooting out from under her in comical fashion.  She didn’t let it stop her though.  She got straight back up again, rubbed her bruised pride, readjusted her helmet and had another go.  And another.  And another.  And another.

Half an hour later she was confident enough to go faster and even to attempt a downhill stretch of path.

Watching her filled me with pride.  Her willingness to do something for the first time in order to learn a new skill, her perseverance and determination to get it right, her resilience to keep on trying when it didn’t go quite as well as she wanted it to…  It brought to mind a Japanese proverb that I love: “Fall seven times, stand up eight”.

She wasn’t afraid of being laughed at or looking silly or being made fun of.

She didn’t care if she stumbled or made a mistake or fell.

She wasn’t scared of getting hurt.

She just saw a new challenge that she wanted to overcome, a new goal that she wanted to achieve… and she went out there and got on with it.

As I watched her growing in confidence, it occurred to me that one of the reasons I don’t try out new things is a (surface-level) fear of being made fun of.  What if I look silly/people laugh at me?  A deeper fear underneath that is one that I am all too familiar with – what if I get something wrong/I’m not good enough at it/I get rejected?  It stops me from doing so many new things – everything from trying out different styles/colours of clothes (I live in jeans, black vest tops and cardis) to doing a yoga or dance class., to striking up a conversation and making new connections.

Plus everything (big and small) you can think of in between.

Inspired by my daughter, I’ve decided to set myself a personal challenge to help me get myself out of this safe little rut I’ve got myself stuck in.  The ‘do something new’ challenge.

Every month I’m going to do something I’ve never done before for the very first time.

I have no idea what these things are going to be yet.  They could be little tiny things that might seem totally insignificant to other people but to me they will (in all likelihood) be huge.  Or they could be genuinely really big scary things that I never, ever thought I could do.  We’ll just have to wait and see I guess.

I had no idea when I started writing this post that this is how it would end up.  But I’ve written it now, and, in my head, that means I’ve committed to doing it.  So I’d better click ‘publish’ before I let the fear talk me out of it.

So from now on, at some point every month, there will be a #dosomethingnew post up on the blog.  I hope you enjoy following me as I work on challenging my fears.  I’d love for you to join me in this, so please do feel free to leave comments below with your thoughts and ideas for new things that you could do for the first time.

Thanks for reading 🙂

 

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