What I learned from (literally) falling on my ass

Posted on January 13th, 2010 in Blogs by Giesla

Last year I took up snowboarding.

While I had been considering learning for years, in all honesty it was my sad attempt to win the favor of a guy I liked. He’s my boyfriend now, for whatever that’s worth, but not my point.

I’m almost 32. While I’m sure there are plenty of “you’re still young, shut up” retorts, to me, it’s not exactly the prime time to start learning an “extreme” sport. I’ve never broken a bone or had surgery, thank you very much, and I don’t really want to end that streak by flailing about on a snow packed hill. However, I’m pretty stubborn and decided to buy my own equipment because a) it ups your cool factor while flailing (if there even is such a thing) and b) I just felt more comfortable not having to go through the rental process every time.

While winter in Minnesota is long, “good” winter days are few. Super frigid temps, more ice than snow and just my desire to sit inside instead of brave the outdoors means I don’t get a whole lot of practice. Also, I can think of about 10 better things to spend $40 on than falling repeatedly on packed snow. But still, I keep doing it.

Besides that I’m stubborn, why do I keep doing it?

When I finally DO get something right and my flailing looks more graceful, it feels REALLY good. Not like yay, I balanced my checkbook or awesome, I crossed a bunch of things off of my to-do list, but WOO! I DID SOMETHING I COULDN’T BEFORE! Something I physically COULD NOT do. Getting my brain to actually comprehend that if it moves my body in a particular way, I won’t fall down. It’s pretty amazing.

The most amazing thing is, it lets me look at other things, the more mundane things, in a different way. I can write a blog. I can do my artwork. I can send emails and keep contact with my customers. But have I really pushed myself to do those things better?

It teaches me humility and patience in a completely different way.

I pride myself on being pretty patient with other people. I’m horribly impatient with myself. I think that if I don’t understand and master something within a few tries that I’m destined to forever suck at it. But I always end up sticking with it because, as I said before, I’m ridiculously stubborn. There are a lot of fairly “normal” things you can suck at. You can suck at doing laundry or shaving or making toast. And in the creative world you can suck at drawing, photography or pottery, to name a few. But you don’t have to do those things in front of a crowd of people. You can practice your laundry skills in private and eventually be able to get a stain out with the greatest of ease. You can sit down with a drawing pad and practice sketching your dog. But on the bunny hill, even though you’re surrounded by people that also aren’t very good, they’re still there. They’re watching you fall and possibly saying in their head, “wow, at least I don’t suck as much as they do.” It’s enough to make you want to pack it in and believe me, I’ve considered it several times. But I don’t. Because at the end of the day, even if I was only able to figure out how to stop or stand up or whatever in 2 or 3 hours, it’s one more thing towards learning to do it right.

So what does this have to do with you?

What I walked away (and I actually walked, not hobbled, which is good!) with today is this: It’s the determination to learn, the willingness to not give up, the ability to let other people see you just outright fail that makes the experience of doing something new exciting and worthwhile. Try to tackle something that seems impossible. It doesn’t even have to be something physical, it could be something like learning Quickbooks. The chances of you getting hurt are pretty slim (unless you pull a shoulder muscle heaving your laptop across the room out of frustration) but the rewards are big. You learn something new, get more organized, and you can tell all your friends how awesome you are because you can reconcile your accounts in 15 seconds. (Not as cool as a 180 or flying down a hill at 50 mph, but whatever. If your friends are nerds, you’re safe.)