Lauren van Vliet, author

There’s a saying that everything we need to know in life, we learned in kindergarten. I definitely learned a few handy things after kindergarten, but there are lots of life lessons to be gleaned from childhood. Over the course of this sporadic series, I’ll share some of those life lessons.

You can read the first post, about trying new things, here.

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Ever have a hard time getting into a new book? It’s not a common occurrence, but when it does, I remember the advice my grade ten English teacher the class: give the book about fifty pages before deciding whether or not to keep going.

Now, I’m pretty sure that’s an arbitrary number of pages, especially considering there are some books that only have about one hundred pages. But the point it well made: it’s a good idea to give things a couple of tries before deciding whether or not you like them.

I’ve applied this advice to several different situations over the years. Most notably, when I first joined writing groups. I’d been living in a new city for over a year, but still didn’t feel particularly connected. I could feel the loneliness creeping in. I wanted to pick up writing again, and stumbled across some write-ins at the public library, hosted as part of National Novel Writing Month.

I went to the first one, feeling very shy and nervous. What if I was in the wrong place? What if they all wrote weird things? What if I had absolutely nothing in common with anyone? By the end of the night, aside from the perfunctory introductions, and to share my word counts during the writing sprints, I hadn’t talked to a single person. As I drove home, I was tempted to never go back. No one would notice that I was missing at the next write-in. But, with the fifty-page rule in mind, I promised myself, no matter what, I would attend at least three.

By the end of the third meeting, I still didn’t really know anyone, but I felt more comfortable in the group so I kept going – and I’m glad I did.

Thanks to the NaNoWriMo write-ins, I connected with another writing group that met at the library monthly. I made the same promise to attend at least three times. Again, nothing hugely exciting happened, but I decided to go the fourth time because it was the end of the scheduled meetings.

At that meeting, another young woman joined. She was working on a project that had clear similarities to my own project. We hit it off. The library writing group continued over the summer, and we continued going. Eventually, she and I, plus a few other writers from around the library, formed our own weekly writing group.

If I hadn’t have stuck it out at the uncomfortably awkward NaNo Write-ins, I likely wouldn’t have that writing community, which was instrumental in my development as a writer.

I will concede that sometimes, things are just wrong and we don’t need to give them another chance – like the systemic racism that is currently being protested. We don’t need to sit back and wait for another example of someone being racially profiled before we acknowledge that it’s wrong.

Or, as a far more mundane example, perhaps a certain texture of food makes you gag. You don’t need to try a new food with that texture to know it’s probably not going to end well.

But these are the exceptions to this rule.

I apply this rule when a situation is forcing me to step out of my comfort zone, which, by its very definition, makes it an uncomfortable process.

This year, 2020, it a prime example of being pushed outside of the comfort zone. Everyone has their own examples of how we’ve had to adapt our lives to the new realities. Unlike the books in grade ten English class, we can’t just put this year away (as much as people might want to by putting up their Christmas tree and calling it a year).

But we can challenge ourselves to continue showing up to the hard things. Whether that’s trying a new outdoor activity just to get out of the house, or starting a new eating and exercise regimen. We need to commit to ourselves that we will try it for a set amount of time, and not give up until that time has passed. Then we can decide whether or not we want to continue, sure in the knowledge that we gave it our best try.

Matt D’Avella also uses a version of this lesson. He calls it The Three Year Rule. He did a video about it, which is worth a watch.