Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. — Henry Ford
The road to mastery is long and bumpy. One nursing theory I’ve carried throughout my life is Patricia Benner’s Novice to Expert model. It can take eight years or more to become clinically masterful, and by then, experts often can’t explain what they know. Ask a masterful nurse how she knew a patient was slipping into sepsis before the vital signs changed. She just knew.
Learning follows an S-curve: a slow, clumsy start, a steep climb, then a plateau. Mastery feels good. It’s one of the five elements of a flourishing life. But I wonder if the plateau is where burnout begins. We’ve become masterful, and now what? We’ve stopped growing. We need a growth edge.
That’s why I admire people who choose to become beginners again: the masterful ICU nurse who goes back to school and becomes a novice nurse practitioner, the elite athlete who switches sports and starts over, the retiree who picks up a violin for the first time. They know how good mastery feels, and they give it up anyway. I recently took up candle making. I’m awkward, I make mistakes, and honestly, being bad at something doesn’t feel good. But it’s also strangely refreshing. It keeps me on my toes. I’m paying attention, I’m present, and I’m learning to give myself grace through every messy mistake.
Maybe the path back to feeling alive starts at the bottom of a new curve. What would you learn if you gave yourself permission to be bad at it?
Wellbeing Resources
September is Suicide Prevention Month
Gary Gulman is my favorite comedian, and I highly recommend his hour-long special about his experience with deep depression. It’s honest, moving, and genuinely funny.
Worried about someone but not sure what to say? The fear of saying the wrong thing often keeps us from saying anything at all. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Talk Away the Dark guide offers practical language for starting those conversations, plus resources and toolkits to help spread awareness.
Explore the guide and resources
Learning to Work with Difficult People
This is an illuminating conversation about handling difficult people. The good news? It’s a skill we can learn. The bad news? It starts with looking within ourselves.
Stay Well, Eileen
