One of my life goals is to become ambidextrous. I am right-handed, and doing practically anything with my left hand feels awkward and unwieldy. But, I know that I wasn't always able to do everything that I can now do with my right hand. Things like writing, brushing my teeth, pouring milk, etc all came with many years of practice. The body's ability to learn through repetition is absolutely amazing.
There are many things that I
can do with my left hand equally or nearly equally as well as I can with my right, including typing on a keyboard, washing mirrors, and playing piano. And for sure, I know that my right hand can't finger notes on a violin worth anything, while my left hand has all the facility in the world. So, I know it's possible for my left hand to learn to do tasks just as complex as the tasks that my right hand does every day. All it needs is the opportunity to try!
As I was thinking about that, I realized that there are so many things that I wish that I were good at that I've just accepted as impossible for me to do. Among those, I wish I were a warmer person. I wish I could get up in the morning. I wish I ate more healthily. I wish I could run for more than a mile. I wish I were good at remembering people's faces. I wish I kept up with what is going on in the world. I wish I were more deeply in touch with my religion. Those are just a few, but the list really goes on and on.
All of those are things that I'd recently given up on ever being able to do. Why? Because I thought, this is just the way I am and maybe I'm just not good at doing those things. One person is born with a certain set of talents, and another is born with another set of talents.
But the more I come to think about it, I think that while sometimes that line of thinking helps keep one's perspective in not comparing oneself to others, I think that I also sometimes use it as a cop-out. I figure, I'll let someone else be good at caring. I'll let someone else be good at understanding the world, helping people to be happy, or whatever else it is that I think I can't do. And so, I don't try as hard. In fact, I don't even give myself the opportunity to try.
Now I realize, I don't have to think that way at all. All I have to do in order to become better at the things that have not naturally come to me is to go
to them. And I don't have to be amazing at them. I don't have to set records with just how up I am with religion, fitness, health, whatever. You don't take one leap from the beginning to the end of the race. Just a little at a time goes a long way. And a lot of that starts with creating opportunities for yourself. Placing yourself in situations where you can exercise or practice those abilities.
If I want to be a warmer person, I can place myself around people whom I admire for that. If I want to get up in the morning, I can give myself enough time to sleep at night. If I want to eat more healthily, I can be more prudent at the grocery store and only have things in my cabinet or fridge that I think will be good for my body. If I want to run for more than a mile, I can get myself out there and start with a few steps. It goes on and on.
And with running as an example, I find that it gets easier as you go. The hardest part is starting, and getting yourself over the hurdle of thinking that whatever it is that you're doing is too hard for you to do. Get past that, and just let your amazing, natural ability to learn do all the work for you. Put yourself in those situations, those opportunities, and then let the momentum do it for you.
It's like a swing; the biggest effort is to kick off and get it going, and then it only takes a little bit of follow-through to
keep it going.
But you'll never get swinging if you never go find the swing in the first place.
I'm about to brush my teeth. Maybe I'll try that left-handed.
