I’m big on hope. I care about helping people foster and nurture the possibility of hope. Hope isn’t a feeling we can force. After living forty years on this little blue planet, I’ve realized we go through seasons when we have heaps of hope, when everything around the corner is overwhelming positive. But we also go through seasons, when it all feels, quite hopeless.
One of the surest ways to nurture the possibility of hope is to decide you’re going to learn something new. It doesn’t have to be monumental or outlandish. Even if it’s relatively easy, it’s still learning, it’s still putting yourself out there and growing. The growth mindset is the mindset you want to foster in your life, not the fixed mindset.
Truth about me: I have never learned to dive. Not really. When I was younger, I tried to learn how to dive, but I always got water up my nose and it freaks me out. About fifteen years ago, I quit trying. Now, I plug my nose and jump in. But as time has passed, and now that I live on a lake and swim all the time, I’ve begun to feel like it’s time to learn how to dive. I told Lucas, and he’s promised to help me become a decent diver by my birthday. (August 18.) We swam out to the dock in the middle of the lake the other day and he gave me a short lesson, with oodles of encouragement.
Here’s what everyone needs if they want to learn something new:
Be Brave. This is actually a really big deal. I hate getting water up my nose and I’m scared of going too deep into the dark lake water around the dock. (What if there’s a monster?) By the time you’re almost forty-one if you haven’t learned how to do something basic, it’s probably because you’re afraid of it. I have to muster up my courage to swim to the dock and practice diving.
When I applied to Fuller Seminary I was terrified. It took every ounce of bravery to put myself out there. I am so thankful I did.
Be Humble. Learning something new, whether it’s a new language, or something physical, like how to ride a bike, or how to rock climb, or something practical like how to properly write a paper, or how start a blog, requires that you accept your smallness. You are small, and must take advice. I can’t dive, but my children can. My son has agreed to teach me. This requires just a little tiny bit of humility on my part. And that is good. Humility is the path toward learning, the path of growth, which is ultimately the path toward the possibility of HOPE, and hope does not disappoint us. (Unless it’s deferred, but that’s another blog post.) Many people have bravery, but they don’t have humility, and so they only get part-way through the difficult learning curve.
When I set out to learn Spanish twenty-two years ago, I almost quit when people started making fun of my attempts, because I was proud. But the desire to learn a second language was greater than my pride, and I figured out a way to push through my own damn ego to learn. This changed my life. Call it self-conscious, call it embarrassed, call it worried-about-what-people-will-think of you. Call it what you want, but you want learn anything new if those things rule your life.
Practice. You don’t have to learn anything the first time around. I swam out to the dock, I told Lucas my goal, and he agreed to help me. I tried four times. I improved, kind of. Now, it’s practice time. Whether Lucas is with me or not, I have to swim out there and practice hurling myself over the dock head first. Over and over and over. It took years of criticism and trying and putting myself out there to speak the kind of Spanish I can speak. It took years of writing horrible sentences to put together a decent paragraph. You won’t get there if you don’t practice.
Decide you want to learn something.
Do these three things… Be brave, be humble, and practice.
Before long, you will have learned something new. Your heart will be stronger, your mind quicker, and your outlook on life will be more positive.
Note: Scroll down and sign up for Tina’s Hope Notes. These are short, weekly notes meant encourage you. You’ll get my free booklet, called Rekindling:Five Faith Practices for the Burnt Out and Overdone.
