What skill would you like to have one year from today?

One year ago the thought of running a half marathon was the furthest thing from my mind. I had never been a runner at all!!

This year there is an entry on my Google Calendar on the 1st September that says ‘Start training for half marathon.’ And the good news is I have already started running.

Last Saturday I went for a run and it was raining and muddy. On Wednesday I went out at lunch time and it was too hot. It felt hard and I wondered how I would ever manage a half marathon in the Caribbean by December.

But then I remembered that last year I had only thought of doing a half marathon on the 9th September. By coincidence there was a weekly running class starting the next day. I only signed up for the race once I had been running for many weeks. I didn’t know if I could complete the half marathon.

And now I have all the techniques from the class, right from the start of this year’s training. This Saturday I went out for over an hour and it felt doable. I am confident that I can do a half marathon.

It is the same with every skill we want to acquire. All we have to do is learn the techniques, put in the practice and watch our progress over time. We humans are so funny.

Whenever we’ve never done something before we think we can’t do it. We convince ourselves that we lack the talent.

Humans are incredible. Almost as soon as we’re born we start learning our mother tongue. We don’t have the advantage of learning from a text book or being able to use a dictionary. By the age of one we understand everything our parents say to us. And by the time we are two we are completely fluent.

It is the same with walking. Babies have to learn how to walk. At first they need to hold on to furniture and cruise around the room. They fall over a lot. It is true they get frustrated but nobody ever gives up saying “I’m just not good at walking,” unless they have an actual disability.

But then again people with disabilities are sometimes so determined that they end up doing awe inspiring things that other people can’t do such as driving without arms. So that goes to show that we can do anything we set our minds to.

Even highly skilled tasks like driving a manual car to get from A to B without crashing feels hard when we first learn. But once we have learned driving is super easy.

So what skill would you like to start learning today and be competent in one year from now?