Learning new skills can be daunting. Here are four ways to embrace being a beginner | Gaynor Parkin and Amanda Wallis

Susan was a high achiever and was comfortable with big goals. She sought advice from her colleagues when she felt uncertain. She had worked for the same company for a long time and had successfully transitioned from one role to another. Susan was good at helping other people develop their skills and careers. She was made to work in a different job.

Susan reached out to me a few weeks into her new job. She was concerned that she wasn't learning the new skills fast enough and was anxious about her performance. Susan felt like she was being compared to other colleagues who were quicker and better at completing key tasks than she was. Susan was concerned that her role could be in jeopardy if she let her team down.

Any of us who have changed jobs will be familiar with Susan's experience. Most of us like the fact that we know what we are doing and feel confident doing it. Some people enjoy the excitement of new things and others find it hard to adjust to new demands.

The concept of a "beginner's mind" is a concept that originated in Zen Buddhism. He wrote his musings on the "beginner's mind" after spending a year taking up new hobbies with less than successful results compared with his daughter who was proficient at a range of new skills. We are slower and clunkier to learn than our children because of our brain's neuroplasticity.

The author suggests four ways to ease our transition.

This is the first thing. We should not put too much pressure on ourselves to learn. Don't start large. There are two We should not repeat the same things over and over. We want to reflect on what we did right and what we did wrong. This is called deliberate practice by psychologists. There are three. It's important to make sure our practice is not the same every time. Our brains become more flexible when we mix up how we practise our new behavior. There are four. We should try to learn from other people, not compare ourselves to experts. It's important to teach the skills we're learning to other people. We learn best when we know we have to share it.

Susan had actively avoided trying anything new that she feared she might not be competent at

Susan identified that she had avoided trying new things as an adult because she was afraid she wouldn't be good at them. She chose hobbies and life experiences that were similar to this pattern at work. Susan's only exception was when she had to raise her children. Susan met up with other new parents when she had her first child because she didn't want to compare herself to the parenting books. She gave new strategies a try even though she and her partner found parenting hard.

graded exposure is a strategy psychologists use to try to change behavior. Slowly practicing things will help us feel more comfortable with anxiety and other feelings. This approach can be very successful, but take time.

We decided to tackle Susan's fear of losing her job with new opportunities because of her fears. Susan was given a steep challenge to step out of her comfort zone. She had to find new hobbies that she wasn't sure she would be able to master.

Susan has been sewing since she was a child. She was surprised to find that she had memories of those torturous classes. She had to watch a lot of videos online to figure out how to do something. She was able to try to enjoy what she was learning instead of being frustrated. She practiced how to accept mistakes and how to teach someone how to sew. Susan described her learning as less than gracious and joked that she wanted to throw a temper tantrum about how hard it was. She is continuing to sew.

We wanted to see how she would use this mindset in her new role. I helped Susan to let her colleagues know that she was anxious about her performance. We talked about the difference between asking for feedback and asking for reassurance. It's a double-edged strategy. It can be comforting to dial down our anxiety, but it can also make us uncomfortable if we don't like something. Susan's goals were to embrace the experience of being a beginner instead of her usual method which was to fast-track herself towards goal mastery Susan's fear of losing her job was alleviated when she collected feedback from her colleagues.

Susan described herself as a beginner, but the learning helped her understand that she could take a different approach. She is more willing to try new things.

The name has been changed.