The New Crop: Issue #25
"You're not supposed to be great at this right now."
What’s in this issue:
💭 Thought: “Remember, you’re not supposed to be great at this right now.”
📚 Read: The Most Important Use of AI: Deepening Our Humanity
😆 Today’s Laugh
Last weekend, my daughters and their friends thought it would be fun to collect dead bugs and then make a memorial for them in our backyard (cuz why not?). So now, we have this:
“To those who died” gets me every time. 😂
💭 Today’s Thought
A little over a year ago I started taking piano lessons. 🎹
When I showed up for my lesson last week, I was actually really nervous, even though my teacher has cultivated an incredibly warm and accepting space, and I had somehow managed to practice more than usual.
As I got ready to sit on the bench and play, feeling pretty jittery, mercifully a voice out of nowhere popped into my head. It said:
“Remember, you’re not supposed to be great at this right now.”
This tiny permission to just learn, to do away with needing to excel, is exactly what I needed in that moment.
In what aspect(s) of your life might you benefit from that same permission?
Other things piano lessons have taught me (unexpectedly):
You’re never too old to learn something new.
No matter how much practice you get performing, the nerves still show up, and that’s OK.
The healing power of putting myself in settings where I’m expected to mess up and just learn — this does wonders for my soul.
🖊️ Today’s reflection
If you’re new to journaling, I highly encourage you to read Nancy Adler’s article: Want to be an outstanding leader? Keep a journal.
This week, find a quiet place and gift yourself 10 minutes to reflect on any of these prompts (or invent your own!):
Where in your life might you give yourself permission to mess up and/or learn?
What’s a time when you intentionally learned something new? What was that experience like?
If you could learn anything, what would it be? Make a list. Bonus: pick one and think through one step you could take to start learning it.
📚 Today’s Read
The Most Important Use of AI: Deepening Our Humanity
“But there’s one possibility for AI that’s not getting a lot of oxygen in this debate, and it’s one of the most important. And that’s the very big question of how we can use AI not just to perform things for humans, but connect more fully with what it means to be human.” Click here to read more.
See you next week!
xo,
Anne