The Beginners Paradox

There’s a moment, right at the start of anything new, that feels like walking into a room where everyone else already knows the steps.

You fumble. You hesitate. You say something weird. You forget the move.

And in that exact moment, you have a choice: step back into comfort, or lean into the awkward.

I’ve come to think of that tension as a kind of threshold—a place where change starts, quietly, not with fireworks but with friction. Where things feel slightly off, misaligned, unpracticed.

The paradox is this:

To end well, you have to start poorly.

Every expert was once a beginner. And not just a beginner in the technical sense, but a visible, vulnerable, sometimes embarrassing beginner. The kind who stumbles through first drafts, fumbles the early pitches, forgets their lines halfway through.

But the ones who keep going? They learn to see that embarrassment not as shame—but as signal.

They come to recognize that awkwardness is a kind of compass, pointing toward growth.

The people I admire most seem to enjoy that threshold. They take on new skills, new languages, new tools not because they expect to be great, but because they expect to feel alive. They treat the early, messy moments like a kind of ritual. Proof that something new is beginning.

And maybe that’s the point.

If you’re not embarrassed now and then, maybe you’ve stopped stretching. If you always feel confident, maybe you’ve stopped listening. And if you only pursue things you’re already good at, you’ve likely put a ceiling on what’s possible.

The beginner’s paradox is simple:

The discomfort is the door. Go through it.

Go through the door