In 6th grade, my then English teacher predicted that I'd never be able to learn a foreign language. She recommended changing to a different school without language requirements.

My parents weren't having it.
So, as a 12-year-old, they sent me to a 3-week immersive language course in Eastbourne, England. On my own, staying with a host family, and doing language classes in the mornings.

This was before the internet, when international phone calls were really expensive. So instead, on my mother’s insistence, I wrote postcards, which she kept.

Three weeks, three chapters, that you can summarise like this:

Week 1: This is horrible. Carpet in the bathroom! No one speaks German! The food is weird. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME????

Week 2: OK, not everything is horrible. The day trip to Brighton with the school was actually quite nice. The family I stayed with was weird, but also hilarious.

Week 3: I’ll stay here. Basically, I informed my parents that I wanted to move to England and not come back.

In week 3, I had basically figured out that languages are for communicating. I had long conversations with everyone who would care to listen. I learned to own the fact that I am German, navigating prejudice and the ramifications of European history with as much grace as a 12-year-old can muster.

I also learned independence. And as a direct result, I trusted myself enough to go on an exchange year to Ecuador at sixteen, coming back with fluent Spanish. It turns out I am more curious about meaningful conversations than I am interested in using flashcards to learn vocabulary.

Today I speak 6+ languages, because my parents rejected a verdict that “I could NEVER do that” on my behalf.

Someone declaring that you could NEVER do that thing, that’s just their opinion.

YOU declaring that you could NEVER do that thing. More often than not, that is a defence mechanism. It’s a lot faster to dismiss an idea that does not align with your worldview than to engage.

But what if you did engage?

Maybe the thing that is holding you back is a skill that you can learn, or an amount of practice you can get over time. Maybe you cannot do the thing RIGHT NOW. But right now is not never.

Or maybe, you realise that you actually don’t WANT to do that thing, EVER. I moved to Spain and stayed here. You could also move to Spain, but that doesn’t mean that you have to.

The answer certainly isn’t “I could NEVER do that.” It’s more likely that at this stage in your life, you have different priorities. And that’s totally fair, as long as you are aware of your choices.

Because those are choices. You can reject a choice outright because it feels unaligned. Or you can engage to figure out whether your reaction is based in your core values, or fear.

Where are you holding yourself back because someone (or yourself) told you, you could NEVER do that? Would you WANT to do that thing?

And now, some reading inspiration:

Learning to Think “Outside the Brain”. This is about movement, conversations, community, and how our brains are often more creative when they can connect to something outside of themselves:

Declarations of Independence is basically a love letter (and how-to) to creating community. I haven’t finished the book yet, but this interview with the author gives you a good starting point to think different about what community can (should?) mean to you (and me, and us):