Welcome to My Beginner Era

Welcome to My Beginner Era

The box sat on my desk for days.

Just sitting there.

Unopened.

Waiting.

It wasn't a threatening box by any reasonable measure — just a tripod and selfie stick I'd ordered to document our Costa Rica trip. A practical purchase. A simple tool.

But every time I walked past it, I felt it. That knot. That low hum of dread that doesn't always have an obvious explanation but is immediately, unmistakably familiar.

I had things to do. More important things. It could wait.

(It could always wait.)

The Story Behind the Knot

Here's what I've learned through Story Work: my reactions are almost never just about the thing in front of me.

That knot in my stomach when I look at an unopened box of something I don't yet know how to use? It has roots. Old ones.

The narrative in my head and the story I believed was that I was never good at sports. And somewhere along the way, not being good at something in front of other people became something I couldn't endure. So I just... didn't try. It was safer that way. No risk of being outside the crowd, of being the one who couldn't keep up, of being visibly not enough.

I also grew up believing I wasn't a people person. I felt lonely a lot. What I didn't know then and has taken decades to even begin to understand — is that the loneliness I carried wasn't just something that happened to me. It was partly the result of a story I was living inside of, one that told me I didn't have the capacity to belong, to connect, to show up and be received.

I didn't know at that point in my life that those feelings were something I had some power to change.

So, I learned to get ahead of the discomfort. To talk myself out of things before they could disappoint me. To reach for the exit before I even walked through the door.

"I didn't really want to do this anyway."

"I have more important things to spend my time on."

Can you relate?

Beginner Energy Is a Real Thing

I've been sitting with a term lately that I heard from someone I deeply admire and am embracing it: beginner energy.

Not beginner as a category of skill level. Beginner as a felt experience — that particular quality of aliveness and discomfort and uncertainty that lives in my nervous system when I’m doing something I don't yet know how to do…YET.

It's the knot in my stomach before I open the box.

It's the awkwardness of my hands not knowing what to do.

It's the urge to laugh it off, put it down, walk away. It's the voice that says you're doing this wrong, or you won’t get it right anyway, before I've even really started.

Beginner energy is uncomfortable. But here's what I'm learning: it's not dangerous. It's not a signal to stop. It's just a feeling, and even big uncomfortable ones, have a beginning, a middle, and an end. My nervous system can hold this. I have more capacity than history has told me. (And so do you!)

Opening the Box

I opened it on a Thursday.

No fanfare. No perfect moment. I just decided that the story I've been living inside, the one that says don't try unless you can be excellent, was not going to be the reason I showed up underprepared for one of the most meaningful trips I've ever taken.

This trip is a gift. For my daughter. For her graduation. For us.

And I refuse to let an unopened box and an old story steal that from me.

So I opened it. I fumbled with the pieces. I held it wrong and then held it differently. I took some truly terrible test shots and laughed at myself and kept going. There was no crowd watching. There was no scorecard. There was just me, a tripod, and the quiet, surprising realization that I could do this.

Not perfectly. Not expertly.

But I could do it.

This Is for You

If you're reading this and you have your own version of an unopened box…something sitting on your counter, or in the back of your mind, or in the corner of your heart that you keep walking past and telling yourself you'll get to later…

I see you.

The knot is real. The dread is real. The old story underneath it is real.

And so is your capacity to sit with that feeling until it passes. To take the next tiny step anyway. To open the box not because it's easy or comfortable, and definitely not because you force yourself to, but because something on the other side of it matters to you. Because you deserve the goodness on the other side and can invite yourself into something more.

You don't have to be excellent. You just have to take the next small step.

Beginner energy is not a flaw. It's a sign that you're growing.

And you are allowed to grow.

Life Happens. Story Matters. Let's Human Together.

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lita@storyworkinprogress.com

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