Unlock New Skills Through Mindfulness, with Andy Puddicombe

(button whirs) (button clicks) (bright music) Headspace Studios. (bright music continues) (soft music) Hi, my name's Andy, and welcome to Radio Headspace and a Friday morning. So a few days back I was reading an article and it was an article written about a very famous Olympian. An Olympian, that has won countless metals gold medals across a number of Olympic games. And as I was reading this one thing in particular really stood out and that was that this person said that they had no natural ability for what they did. And I thought about that. And look, I think most of us we look at people we admire in life. We look at whether it's in sport or art, or music or cooking or whatever it might be, we assumed that, "Mm, yeah, okay. They've had some lessons. They've learned, they practiced a lot but they probably have some kind of natural ability." And it was hard to believe, you know? It was a cyclist by the way, it was Chris Hoy. Who people on the other side of the pond are more likely to recognize that name. But thought it was really interesting. And he said that, you know, it was more through his life that he had to uncover it and find it. And I thought that was a really interesting idea for all of us. I'm not suggesting that there's an Olympian in all of us necessarily, but the idea that we might have to discover and uncover our talent rather than necessarily be predisposed to a particular talent. I feel like as life goes on, we become, perhaps not always but maybe it's just because of the way our lives are as well, they tend to be busier and there's more responsibility and everything else. But we tend to stick to the things that we know. We tend to stick to the things that we like doing. We kind of, yeah, I can say shut down but we maybe don't try as many new things as we might when we're younger. When that idea of learning and curiosity is perhaps a little stronger a little more alive. And because of that, perhaps we don't necessarily end up pursuing the things that we would like to. And my guess is that each and every one of us there is at least one thing. We look back at our youth and think, "Oh, wow, I wish my parents had kind of encouraged me to learn that or I wish I'd done that sort of growing up." Or maybe it's sort of something that's later on that we thought, "Ah, there was a real moment there where I could have done such and such." And it's really easy to just assume that the time has passed that that's no longer really an option. It's a strange thing that the mind would do that. There are probably some notable exceptions as we get to a certain age. There...