Last week, I got a pair of inline skates. I haven't had skates since high school, about twenty years ago. The first day I put them on and skated, I didn't fall down. The second day I put them on, I fell down a lot, and I'm more proud of that. I made a lot faster progress that second day.

We want to stay upright. At some point early on in life, we learn to avoid falling down. Maybe we skin our knee, or we get a bruise. Whatever the case, it hurts. Naturally, we want to avoid pain!

But have you ever watched a child learn how to walk? It's not a smooth, linear process. The child usually first learns to crawl, and along the way probably bumps their head a bit—ouchies! Then they learn to stand up, and they'll fall on their bum a lot, sometimes bumping other parts when they do—also ouchies! And that continues when they start walking. Lots of little falls, little bumps, and big cries. After each one, the kid will eventually get back up and try again. And eventually, they're walking and running and jumping.

When an adult learns a new skill like skating, though, it usually looks very different. They put on their skates and teeter around, careful to not fall down. They hug the wall of the roller rink to have something to hold onto. They take small, ginger steps with short glides and eventually get rolling. Given enough time, they do learn to skate.

This instinct makes a lot of sense. As an adult, if we fall, it's more likely to hurt us. Recoveries take longer. Complications increase. So we protect ourselves by avoiding getting hurt. But the thing is? Falling doesn't have to be dangerous. You can fall a lot without getting hurt, if you learn to fall safely. With inline skating, you have protective gear (helmet, knee/elbow pads, wrist guards) which protect you, and you have techniques for falling which let you use this gear to its fullest potential.

If you let yourself fall safely, you can learn skills a lot faster. Being afraid of falling means that you never commit. You don't put your full self into something, because you are always ready to bail if things go sideways. That tension prevents you from doing your best and it slows down your learning.

I'm not just talking about physical skills here. This is true across all the things we do as adults. We can build up a lot of anxieties and fears that hold us back from doing our best at things. We're afraid to try something and fall flat on our face, so we hesitate and in that moment of hesitation—that's when we do end up failing. We fall down because we held ourselves back because we were afraid of falling!

This has come up for me concretely a few other ways recently.

• At my voice lessons, I used to be concerned I was going to hit the wrong note or be out of tune. I would think about it a lot, and those moments of doubt would lead me to be tense, or distracted, or just late and panicked. When I let go of that and decided to just commit to doing what I'll do, right or wrong, that's when my vocal technique improved by leaps overnight.
• At my saxophone lessons, I was also worried I'd do some of the rhythm exercises wrong^[1]. I got them wrong before, so I tried to focus on doing it right. But when I started embracing just doing it and trusting myself, and let myself fail? Then, again, my technique improved immediately, because I could actually use my skill.
• When writing poetry, I used to worry that my poems would be bad, and I'd over-analyze them. I was afraid to write a bad poem, so I didn't write much at all, and what I did write I would never share. When I stopped worrying about that and let myself write bad poems? Suddenly I was writing good poems.
• And with inline skating, of course, I was holding myself back when trying to skate faster or do T-stops or spin stops. Once I decided to fall down (my daughter held me to this goal: "mom, you didn't fall yet! no, the one on purpose doesn't count!"), I fell a few times but made much faster work of improving.

In each of these, the stakes for failure were really, really low. But even if the stakes are high, worrying about falling will just make it more likely.

I think this is one of those skills that some people develop that helps them get where they want to go. If you're willing to fall, you're willing to take chances. If you take a lot of chances, that adds up eventually and you'll have some big wins. Just do it safely, so that they don't add up to a lot of big losses, too.

1. My teacher has me do exercises from Rhythmic Training by Robert Starer, and it has dramatically improved my musical abilities. It's an incredible resource. ↩