HERE WE ARE, fully fledged and successful women. We have knowledge and experience, perhaps even wisdom. We are good – maybe even excellent – at certain things, and if we are a certain kind of lucky, we get paid and promoted for those things.
Efficiency feels good and smart. It’s totally understandable we fall into grooves. As one of the founders of Modern Elder Academy (MEA) often called the world’s first mid-life wisdom school, I still often confuse my fluency with dignity. I am literally and figuratively afraid to fall.
As an ex-professional athlete and former World Cup snowboarder, I project all manner of expectations around my physical performance. I should be strong, and I should know how to move through various situations and landscapes with fluidity and grace.
It’s this type of thinking that has robbed me of the joy of being a beginner. From launching and growing award-winning hotels, to surfing, I’ve had to overcome my own judgments to allow myself to play. This has often taken much too long.
In my professional life, imposter syndrome has raised its regret–inducing head, and I’ve found myself in the dreaded “panic-anxiety” zone. In the founding of MEA, I was often pushed to places where I felt not credible or unqualified, but it was what the business required. It’s an awful feeling, especially if one is used to the feeling of mastery and prowess.
While the retreat from anxiety is understandable, I’ve had to guard against overcorrecting, as boredom is the punishment for over-indexing towards knowing. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his book called Flow, says there is a state when skill and challenge are in balance. In that moment, which he named “flow,” we are neither anxious nor bored, but focused to a point that time itself can seem to fall away.
I worry flow can become elusive as I become more expert. I pay attention to the overcorrection – to the traps of knowing, of expertise, the seduction of agility and dexterity, and I still can get it wrong.
In the past 7 years at MEA, I’ve seen many brilliant and successful women come through our workshops, grappling with their own professional and personal midlife transitions. Being a beginner can be so foreign after a lifetime of developing our competencies.
Imagine this: the journey from 20 to 50 is the same length as 50 to 80. There is nothing at 20 that I felt too old to learn, maybe competitive gymnastics. But it’s not an uncommon feeling at midlife to believe we are too old to add an entire new skillset. Yet 20 to 50 = 50 to 80, both involve a period of 30 years. It’s the same.
Courtesy MEA
Carole Dweck’s work concerning “fixed versus growth mindset,” essentially the difference between proving and improving, has been an unlock for many women we’ve worked with, and for me personally as well. When I can recognize where I am fixed, I can get curious about both the why and the what, and then I can change the how.
Here’s a personal story: “Skinning,” a way of ascending a ski slope under one’s own power with special equipment, is a favorite activity of mine. For many years I wanted to skin. But I was afraid to learn. I felt ashamed I didn’t already know how the equipment worked. I’d actually sold it as a sales rep at one point. Still, I thought it would be difficult, awkward and embarrassing to learn. These limiting beliefs lurked below the surface; I just processed them as resistance.
It wasn’t until I named those limiting beliefs and recognized I was simply trying to prove my competence, that I was able to face my own fixed mindset and allow myself to try something new. It was awkward at first. I was clumsy and sweaty. I smashed my cold fingers on unfamiliar gear.
It was glorious. As Robert Frost wrote, “way leads onto way.” This experience of allowing oneself to learn, to be a beginner, was a major unlock.
These are some of the questions we ask women we work with, and ask ourselves.
- Where in your work and/or your personal life are you fixed?
- What are your limiting beliefs?
- Where could you show up more curious, less judgmental?
- How could you allow a growth mindset to help widen the flow channel
Women we work with have found, as I have, when we open ourselves to curiosity and a beginner mindset, we discover rewarding experiences and powerful growth by embracing challenges from a place of vulnerability.
“Find out what you like and what you hate about life. Start doing more of what you love, less of what you hate.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
By Christine Sperber
Christine Sperber is the Co-founder and Chief Experience Officer of MEA, and the chief architect of the experiential aspects of workshops and programs. She is a former World Cup snowboarder and serial entrepreneur and innovator who has launched and grown award-winning hotels, businesses and industry-evolving ideas in the sports and hospitality worlds and beyond.
