Trying skiing for the first time. Or what Jean-Paul Sartre, Taylor Swift and a growth mindset have in common.

I went skiing for the first time a couple of weeks ago. As someone who makes a living out of working with leaders and teams to help them access a growth mindset, the trip somewhat confronted me with the need to retrieve my own. It only seemed fair to share.

Picture the scene…

You’re a somewhat clumsy 40 something-year old embarking on her first trip up a mountain with one mission: “to learn how to ski” (and return in one piece). As someone who has never had much interest in learning to ski, it all seemed rather ‘faffy’ and expensive to me, my partner Iain convinced me that it was time to give it a go (read: finally got bored asking and booked the holiday whilst I was in a day-long meeting so couldn’t argue). So off to Bulgaria we went and up the mountain I gamely ascended, muttering somewhat about the levels of admin involved (Is all this kit necessary? Really?!), but ready for my first lesson.

And things started positively enough. I was soon getting to grips with the whole staying upright and moving malarkey and was even feeling a burgeoning enthusiasm for the whole idea– “Maybe this is it! Maybe I’ve found my thing and I’ll unexpectedly be brilliant at this!” Enthusiasm was very much the character of day one, and I descended from the mountain thinking – “ok admin-heavy but doable.”

L’enfer, c’est les autres - Jean Paul-Sartre

Day two stopped my burgeoning enthusiasm in its tracks. The beginners’ slopes of Bansko are quite a thing: small hordes of rather nimble but oblivious children skiers, first-time grown-ups wobbling like overgrown ducks trying to skate (my kin), and a chairlift-queuing system that for a polite Brit was absolutely incomprehensible. As I approached the top of the slope on a button lift, I was confronted with a man who seemingly could not get out of the way, I careened backwards down the mountain to avoid braining him and found myself truly in “hell is other people” mode. Throw worsening weather from stage right into the mix and my sense of humour breakdown was complete: “this isn’t for me, it’s all too unpredictable and alarming – get me out of here!” So I cut my lesson short and slunk down the mountain to safety.

I’m the problem, it’s me: lessons from Taylor and finding my growth mindset

It took me until day four to get back up the mountain again, as I reflected on my previous attempts. Yes, the weather had been off-putting, yes, other people had been annoying and unpredictable, but did I really want to leave my first skiing experience on a bum note? (no pun intended).

After all, the uncertainty of the new is what being a beginner is all about. It’s at the very heart of what I’m always telling the leaders I work with: we need to get comfortable with not having all the answers, get comfortable with discomfort- and I was certainly feeling that.

It seemed to me, that if I didn’t lean into that discomfort and try again, the problem here - as Taylor Swift might say - was me. Thus convinced that it was time to practise what I preach, I dug deep for my sense of curiosity, prepared to make friends with my discomfort and back up the mountain I went.

What I learnt:

Did I ski well on that final day? Well, no. Did I fall over? Plenty. But I got up again (and again) and kept going until the practice felt a little less ‘in my head’, and a little more like it was entering my muscle memory. And it worked. At some point, I stopped overthinking it all and realised my mindset had shifted. Even better, I was having fun – what a revelation.

Now I’m home, I have continued to reflect on the experience, and there a few things that helped me access my own growth mindset that may have application elsewhere.

1. Try to spot when you’re stuck: when trying new things, the instinct is to resist the unfamiliar and to protect yourself – it’s natural. But if you can recognise, you’re doing this, and how ‘stuck’ that makes you, then you can start to do something about it. What are your tells when you’re resisting a change, opportunity or something new? ?
2. Ask ‘what if?’ I found this a helpful refrain when I was getting in my own head. What if I’m wrong? What if this time it’s more fun? ?What if I learn something? This for me has everyday application and I’ll certainly be asking it more often to lessen my certainty about potential outcomes. ?
3. Give yourself permission to ask the questions – I remain a recovering perfectionist and don’t like to seem ignorant (who does?), but during this experience I gave myself permission to ask all the questions I needed to build a picture of what to expect. After all, why would you have all the answers the first time you experience something? This has business application too: we often cut ourselves short from asking something, not wanting to appear unknowledgeable or na?ve, but what if (there it is again) someone else could benefit from the same information? What if the answer could reframe your whole perspective? Ask the questions. ?

And will I ski again? Who knows. I didn’t hate it! And at least next time I’ll know what to expect, and to lean in, both physically and metaphorically, to the discomfort.