You know how someone will mention how an artist they admire can make what they’re creating look easy? It’s often meant as a compliment to the person they’re saying it about, as if the art just flew off the brush and landed in such a way, or that watching them work is like watching a wonderful dance in which the love for their craft is palpable. It’s a beautiful thing! I love seeing artists work like this. I find it very inspiring! There are times, too, when a person is saying something looks easy out of frustration because when they’ve gone to try what they thought looked easy, they discovered that it’s really not as easy as it looked.

If this sounds familiar, or you’ve felt this happen too, try not to get discouraged. What’s really happening there is the sense of dissonance caused by what you felt would happen (or that you’d like to happen) and due to this feeling, what you projected onto the experience. Instead of the experience of trying the new thing being what’s causing the issue, it’s actually the initial belief you have in your mind that you thought it would be easy that’s causing that frustration.

If you watched someone do something and they made it look easy, that may be because they’ve done it before and probably have been doing it for a while. It could very well be their way of working. They may have spent years doing this thing, and grown to understand the nuances and balance of, say, the amount of one thing mixed with another, or what it takes to align or layer parts of the process in order to get into an optimal flow of things.

Stepping into the new experience with a sense of wonder or excitement about learning something new or different can yield some wonderful results and can really set yourself up for a future that’s less inhibited by fear, worry or overthinking. Just try whatever it is you want to try, and go into it with curiosity. And perhaps with an open mind and willingness to grow and learn too. Lean into having an understanding that whether or not something is easy is of no consequence, and make the growing, learning, and discovering what’s exciting about it.