Adopt A Beginner’s Mindset

Allow Grace to be a Beginner

When I asked the Universe for a real estate office, I had never had my own office. I had never even run a team. I was missing almost all the skills needed to take on the project. I certainly did not have the funds to build everything. But I signed on the dotted line with determination and faith that I would build this business from the ground up, one day at a time. I learned everything I needed to know along the way. It all worked out. It always all works out when you put in the work.

The point is, it’s time to stop waiting. With the right mindset and determination your entire world can change overnight. You can have, be, or do anything you want in life. Move forward with confidence in anything you decide to take on no matter how impossible it seems in the beginning. You will figure everything out along the way. Believe in yourself. Do your part. Do the work. Then, leap with faith. Go before you are ready.

You may see that I win a lot. What you might not see is I also fail a lot. I mess things up. I got it wrong. I say things that I shouldn’t. Sometimes, I even strike out completely. I always keep going. The point is to start. I almost always figure it out along the way. You will too!

Planning

Spend 80 percent of your time planning and 20 percent executing. There’s absolute value in planning. I love planning and optimizing. But you’re never going to have everything perfectly planned. You must start anyway. Don’t let perfection hold you back. You must throw your ball out onto the field. You must kick it forward by taking one step every single day. Improve as you go. Figure it out as you go. Don’t worry if you aren’t going fast enough. Your victory will come when it is destined according to divine timing. You don’t want to regret missed opportunities in your Game because you waited. Begin now. Improve later.

I find it fascinating that, as children, we are always told we can do anything. We are told to just give it our best shot, that we’ll do better next time. When a five-year-old plays their first soccer game and kicks the ball the wrong way, you don't tell them they are an idiot and not to kick the ball that way. You congratulate them for making their first kick, for being brave enough to enter the game. You encourage them and tell them they’ll do better next time. And guess what? They’re excited to try again and keep getting better! Why do we stop doing this as adults? Why do we stop just taking our best shot? This is a problem in our society. 

As adults, we are afraid to start at the bottom. We are afraid to fail. We forget our childhood confidence. When you do something imperfectly, even if it is the first time, someone says “that's not good enough”. You don’t like the feeling of not being good enough. You’re discouraged. You don’t want to do it again. You aren’t encouraged and reminded that you’ll get better and better as you do it again and again. Or, that as you do it more frequently, you may get very good or even great at it. The feeling of not being good enough is a fallacy. Of course, you're not going to be perfect when you start. No amount of planning is going to make your first shot perfect. Just throw your ball out onto your game field and improve as you go. If you wait for everything to be perfect, you’ll never start. There’s no threshold of good enough when you are starting. The act of starting is itself good enough. 

Adopt a Beginner’s Mindset
Have you ever felt intimidated by starting something new? Maybe you want to write a book, learn a new skill, or start a business, but the fear of not being good enough holds you back.

Just as you can't ever be perfect when you start something new, you can't begin as a master. Pick any master at anything and look back at the first time they started. You'll see that they were all beginners once. Was Oprah a master presenter her first time on air? Absolutely not. She had to learn and grow through experience. The same goes for other successful individuals such as Albert Einstein (who was a beginner in physics), Serena Williams (who was a beginner in tennis), and Steve Jobs (who was a beginner in technology). They all embraced their beginner's mindset and allowed themselves to learn and improve over time.

You must be willing to suck in the beginning. If you've never done it before, you can't be a master. You must be a beginner to be a master. You'll get great by doing more of it.

Here are a few more examples of renowned individuals who started as beginners in their respective fields:

J.K. Rowling: Before she became the best-selling author of the Harry Potter series, Rowling was a struggling writer who faced numerous rejections. She persisted and kept writing, embracing her beginner's mindset until she found success.

Michael Jordan: Widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players of all time, Jordan didn't excel immediately. He was cut from his high school basketball team but used that setback as motivation to work harder and develop his skills. His relentless dedication turned him into a basketball legend.

Thomas Edison: Edison's name is synonymous with innovation, but he faced countless failures and setbacks throughout his career. He famously said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Edison's persistence and willingness to embrace the beginner's mindset led to groundbreaking inventions such as the electric light bulb.

I want you to become a master at being a beginner! That’s right. I want you to get good at starting new things. Embrace that beginning feeling. Break through it to become a master. This is one thing уоu саn be good at quite quickly. You’ve probably already been a beginner a few times in life. Whether you like the feeling or not, start and keep going. 

There is a difference, however, between how you’ve dealt with beginning things in the past and what I am teaching you now. In the past, you were worried about starting and focused on perfection. You were always overly соnѕсіоuѕ оf уоur ability. Society trained you to think like this. Society taught you to be hard on yourself and other people. You tell yourself and others not to start something until you or it is close to perfect. This is not reasonable or sustainable. I want you to stop thinking about this. It’s not okay. 

Don’t ever let yourself be discouraged from trying something new because you lack knowledge or don’t feel ready enough. You may surprise yourself. Maybe that new skill you’ve wanted to cultivate comes naturally to you. Maybe you’ll strike out. Either way, you’ll figure it out as you go. If nothing else, you’ll get better at being a beginner and you’ll be able to start the next thing that will become a wild success.  

Initially, you may feel as if you know nothing about what you are starting. Everything seems so foreign. You might feel it over your head and think that it will be difficult forever. Everyone goes through this. It is part of the process of growing and learning. Everyone who came before you, everyone who has ever succeeded, has had to go through this process. You learn fast when you are starting something new. When you get things wrong, you learn which areas you have room to improve. You are constantly being given data about what is and is not working. Using this data, you can constantly strengthen your processes and abilities. The beginning phase of something is a hugely empowering time! Why wouldn’t you want to start something new, knowing how fast you are going to learn to do it well? I love starting something new for this very reason! You will too once you adopt this mindset!

Mastery and excellence are achieved through practice. The glory in mastering something is in the million steps it took to get there. It’s in the persistence, effort, heart, and soul that you put into your journey. We must all start somewhere. This involves you taking the first step. Then, taking the next. Nothing more and nothing less. Beginning is the key to where you’re going. Every single time.