When testing Mother Nature, or when testing yourself in a new skill, always respect your surroundings:
Getting used to a new place takes time. Honing a new skill takes time. When you look at a professional doing something and think, “Pfft, that’s easy,” chances are, the pro is making it look easy. Chances are also that while you might master one aspect of the work quickly, the pro has depth of ability you can’t even begin to fathom.
Cases in point related to Mother Nature:
- Professional surfing. Even from the kiddie-body-surfing Elle & I did on our vacation, I can tell that there’s a lot of nuance to the art of surfing, from timing the wave to understanding the physics of how it will break.
- Professional skiing. That wedge they teach you on the bunny hill to stop? Try that on a 45-degree slope and you’ll cross your tips, face plant, and flip over a few times. That pro knows how to bend her equipment in ways a novice wouldn’t even know is possible!
Cases in point related to office life:
- Your new management job. If you think it’s all roles and responsibilities, you’re in for a rude awakening. Agreeing on responsibilities does not breed trust; relationships breed trust. And managers’ jobs are to foster trust before anything else.
- Personal branding. Personal branding masters don’t “change the way you see me,” they “change the way you see.” Now tell me: do you think you can change my perspective through a consistent use of fonts + lots of Google hits? Or do ya think maybe the concept runs a little deeper?
So before you dive into something new (or dive out of something old), look around and ask yourself: do you really understand what’s going on? Have you shown proper respect to your surroundings?
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