Beginner's Mind at Midlife: Learning to Begin Again

I’ve been thinking a lot about shoshin lately, the Japanese word for “beginner’s mind.” I first wrote about it here, after learning the word from a guest on my podcast Fifty Words for Snow. My co-host, Emily John Garcés, and I look for words that have no English equivalent, and shoshin was one of the treasures we uncovered. It combines shou (beginning) and shin (heart-mind), meaning that it isn’t just about thinking like a beginner but also about feeling like one, keeping both head and heart soft, open, and willing.

That sounds poetic, but in practice it means I’ve been hunched over my laptop cursing at audio-editing programs that don't don't do what I want and can't read my mind, no matter how angry I get.

Lately, my biggest experiment in beginner’s mind has been learning to edit my own podcast. I don’t mean “sort of edit.” I mean sitting with raw audio tracks, trying to remove coughs, re-balance voices, trim out the dead air where I forgot what I was saying, and stitch it all back together so it sounds like a real show. Every time I figure out one piece of software, another one pops up: exporting, mixing, noise reduction, "studio sound." The learning curve looks less like a hill and more like a sheer cliff face.

And yet, shoshin asks me to stay here: awkward, fumbling, not the expert. To remember that discomfort is part of beginning.

Joanna’s Beginner’s Mind

I became the legal guardian of a 60-year-old autistic woman named Joanna after her mother died, a story I tell in my book Easy Street. Since the writing of the book, Diana has been quietly practicing her own form of shoshin, learning to live on her own. That fact alone is its own brave new chapter.

Joanna stopped reading in third grade, when she left school. She simply never picked it up again. For decades, books weren’t part of her life. Recently, though, I gave her a book about clouds... and she began reading again. I tell the story here. A beginning reader at 60.

The Night at the Astor Club

Last month, I was scheduled to do a reading from my book Easy Street at the Astor Club in Hollywood. Joanna surprised me by showing up “incognito,” which in her definition meant wearing a wig, a mask, and sunglasses. The funny part? A press junket was happening at the same hotel, so as she walked through the lobby and into the club, people assumed she was a celebrity. She was just trying to feel safe enough to attend… and it worked. That was what she needed to be comfortable, so she did it.

Joanna practicing.

Source: Jim Vallely, used with permission

Then she did something even braver.

I asked her to come on stage with me. It was the first time she had ever spoken in front of an audience. I asked what she wanted people to remember about her mother. Without flinching, she told the crowd her mother had worked with Gloria Allred. Then she delivered one of her mother’s favorite jokes:

“The only problem with political jokes is sometimes they get elected.”

The audience roared.

And in that moment, Joanna wasn’t just answering a question, she was stepping into a room as someone new, speaking in public for the first time, sharing her story. She wasn’t an expert at it. She was a beginner. Which is exactly what made the moment exciting.

Why We Need Beginner’s Mind at Every Age

When you’re younger, being a beginner is expected. You fall off bikes, fumble through dates, screw up job interviews. It's all part of the package. But as we get older, we’re supposed to have our résumés polished and our skill sets locked down. We don’t like to look foolish.

The problem is: that comfort calcifies. We become experts in staying in our lane.

That’s why shoshin matters so much later in life. It’s not just about learning a new software program or picking up a book after decades. It’s about the courage to start down an unfamiliar path, to be vulnerable, to risk wobbling on uncertain legs.

Beginner’s mind is humbling. The word “humble” itself comes from humus, the earth. To be humbled is to be brought back to ground level, to touch the soil again. And maybe that’s what shoshin really is: letting ourselves be rooted in the earth of not-knowing, so that something new can grow.