I’ve been struggling with this post for the better part of the past week, so deeply enmeshed in its familiarity…it’s been difficult to detach myself from the central message. However, Curt Rosengren’s recent post on revelling in the unfamilar has nudged me over the hump, now coasting downward with momentum to write something (hopefully) comprehensible.

It all got started with something that Patti Digh wrote at the beginning of the week in her post about mud balls. Beyond the new-found curiosity she stimulated with the art of dorodango, she identified a personally well-known gremlin, one that seems to be popping out of his gremlin-hole a bit lately. This gremlin’s name is “Not-Foolish” and is a close cousin to another gremlin called “Got-It-All-Together.”

She writes:

In the classes I teach, I watch people navigate their fear of looking foolish, their desire not to admit that they don’t know, their need to be in control, to know, to have the right answer, to say what teacher wants to hear, to focus on something “out there” and not “in here,” to get the “A” or, at the very least, to leave without being changed in any significant way by their interactions with new knowledge or insight.

The connection for me has to do with my present newness within my work. I’m trying something rather risky…working for a for-profit business for the first time in my career and taking on a newly created position within that company. It’s a mix of fluctuating emotions and situations which conjures feelings of exhilaration and frustration in only ways that something new can do. And, for the most part, I love it. Yet, there are times when I will yield to Not-Foolish in a meeting in order to not feel socially uncomfortable. Hey, it’s okay…it’s a natural part of the learning process since the best learning often means stepping outside of your comfort zone.

So, I’ve walked with Patti’s quote above for a week, allowing it to filter into my conscious interactions with others at work. I’ve acknowledged Not-Foolish and accepted that my questions and comments may indeed seem foolish, but are essential if I’m going to change. Yet, I still could not put this understanding to words until the serendipitous convergence of ideas from Curt and Gretchen Rubin. Damned if working for a new company isn’t like being a traveller in a new country.

For me, the similarities are striking, from just learning how things work (such as the copier and train schedule) and where things are located (such as meeting room D and the local grocery). Then, of course, there’s the whole issue of navigating the differences in culture. With that in mind, I can fully appreciate Gretchen’s feelings when she notes:

But when I’m the tourist, I feel a childish agony of self-consciousness. Intellectually, I know that people aren’t staring in mocking disbelief, that they aren’t interested enough to feel disdainful. It’s my foolish pride—my desire to appear smooth and sophisticated and in control.

Curt adds:

I have felt that same “tourist shame” as Gretchen, and I know it makes no sense whatsoever. So whenever I feel it creeping up on me, I try to turn it on its head and revel in the fact that I’m exploring something new. I revel in the fact that I don’t know my way around, and that I have the opportunity to find my way, rather than navigating on autopilot.

I try to do something similar when I’m stepping into something new on the career front. It’s inevitably bumpy at the beginning, but rather than anguish over the bumps, I try to say, “How cool to be on this new and unfamiliar adventure! I bet something interesting will come out of it.”

These kindred souls have offered an emotional map for navigating the new experience, regardless for where it may be. Trying out a new club? Starting a new school program? Being new is being new and requires patience with ourselves and others. The good news is that sense of newness is transitory as we acclimate to the culture. Of course, our challenge is to constantly seek out those opportunities to be new at something, to grow further outside the safe comfy zone of the familiar.