Call to Adventure
When I was an 18-year-old boy, I saw a woman reading in a hotel lobby. I couldn't have imagined that my whole life was about to change. As I closed in on her, I couldn't understand the words in her book, so I blurted out, "What language do you read?" Dana Maple, the woman, told me it was German. I was thrilled to meet a German-speaking American.
Dana and I happened to be visiting Utah for the same Outward Bound course. Over three weeks, she taught me lullabies like Alle Meine Entschen and told me stories of her travels in Berlin. Meeting Dana was my call to adventure. I became completely fixated on learning German, but there was just one problem. I had never successfully learned to speak another language. In high school, Italian was my worst and most dreaded class. I even went so far as to brand myself as an unskilled language learner. The only path forward was to try something new.
From the onset, my approach to learning German has varied dramatically, but one thing remained constant. I never stop learning. In the past couple of years, I can count on one hand the number of days where I didn't at least write in my journal or hear a couple of minutes of a German podcast but more on "how" in the next post.
Conclusion
I'll end with this, we often believe we can't do things, so we don't even try, but it is a vast underestimation of our potential. So what is something you have never tried because you think you can't? That may be a helpful place to start.
Side Note: As a kid, my German-American heritage and a long-time friendship also contributed to my desire to "one day" learn German.