When you make changes in your life, especially when learning new skill sets, you’ll have to cross a moat of low status—a period where you are bad at the thing or fail to know things that are obvious to other people.

It’s called a moat both because you can’t just leap to the other side and because anyone who can cross it has a real advantage.... See more

When you step into the Moat of Low Status, you also step away from the grinding of normalcy. On your first day of dance class, you don’t know how to move your body. Isn’t that exciting? You don’t know how to move your body. This thing you’ve been lugging around is now a whole new vehicle — it might move like a frenzied wolverine, or an indifferent... See more

but learning demands a temporary surrender of pride. you can’t learn while protecting your image at the same time. you have to allow yourself to sound clumsy, to look unpolished, to admit you’re not there yet. it feels like loss in the moment — loss of dignity, loss of certainty — but it’s really the ground clearing itself so that something else... See more