The problem with starting over, learning something new is at the moment you start you can’t be anything but a dud, a zero.
No one likes that. But the good news is that you can only improve. Everything you do moves you forward. Every step gives you experience and insight. Everything you learn opens up new possibilities.
The progress from dud to stud is one step at a time. You start at zero as a total incompetent. How could you be anything else? You’ve never done it before. But from there on its nothing but progress forward and continual improvement! Depending on how driven you are, you go from incompetent to beginner to average to competent to good to pretty good to very good to great!
They say there are about 10,000 steps to greatness in anything. 10,000 steps, things you must do, things you must learn, repetitions you must go through. I don’t know if that’s really true, but there will be a bunch of them and the sooner you run through them the quicker you can get to the Top.
Don’t focus on where you are.
Focus on where you are heading and the progress you are making.
Enjoy the fun of learning new things, developing new skills, accumulating new experiences and growing in a new arena! Keep your head down, stay on track and soon you’ll soon be amazed at how far you’ve come. As one of the experienced riders, Michael Newman, told me when I was first competing in Show Jumping… “It can only get better!”
*Originally posted on May 25, 2011. Updated on April 15, 2015.
