The Most Uncomfortable (and Powerful) Position for an Expert

A few years ago, I decided to learn to paint. I had this romantic vision of gracefully turning watercolors into something beautiful. I am a competent person. I've built businesses. How hard could it be?

It was a disaster. The paints ran. The picture in my head was nothing like the one on the canvas. A teenager next to me was effortlessly painting a picture more beautiful than the teacher’s. I felt my face get hot. I was a complete, fumbling novice, and I hated it.

That feeling in the painting class is a perfect mirror for what so many of us feel when we step into the online world.

You can command a boardroom or litigate a complex case with absolute confidence. You are at the top of your game. And yet, trying to understand a social media algorithm can make you feel like a fool. This dissonance—the gap between your deep expertise and your novice status—is maddening.

The result is a quiet, paralyzing fear of looking incompetent. So we often choose to do nothing at all, because doing something imperfectly feels like a failure.

The solution is not to pretend you know everything. It is to give yourself permission to be a beginner again. It’s about adopting what Zen masters call Shoshin, or "Beginner's Mind."

It’s a posture of openness and a lack of preconceptions. It isn’t about forgetting what you know; it’s about setting aside the armor of your expertise so you can actually learn. As Shunryu Suzuki wrote:

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."

Your expertise can become a cage. The beginner's mind is the key that unlocks the door, replacing the pressure to perform with the permission to learn.

This week, find one small, technical thing in your business you don't know how to do. Your only job is to ask one "stupid" question about it. The goal isn't even the answer; it's the liberating act of asking.

This is a journey you don't have to take alone. As your first act of embracing the beginner's mind, comment and tell me the one question you're going to ask this week. I'll read and respond to every one.

Speaking of first steps, the "Wisdom Base" we discussed in the welcome sequence is the single best place to start organizing your expertise. If you missed it, you can read the full guide on how to build one on the blog. It's the perfect project for a beginner's mind.

Read the Wisdom Base Guide here.

P.S. On Wednesday, we're going to talk about the "unsexy" truth of what actually works online. It's an antidote to shiny objects and a return to what matters.