Feeling worse at something new does not always mean you are failing. A lot of the time, it means you are finally doing the work required to improve.
I was reminded of that after a golf lesson. I have spent most of my life around contact sports like basketball and football. In those sports, you are used to being aggressive, moving hard, and relying on muscle memory. Golf is a different animal. You are supposed to hold the club with control, slow down, maintain your stance, and avoid trying to absolutely crush the ball.
That does not come naturally to me.
During the lesson, I was changing my stance, adjusting my swing, and trying to process every instruction at once. Honestly, it was rough. I have probably seen kindergarteners hit a golf ball better than I did while I was working through those changes.
But I left knowing more than I knew when I arrived. That is the point.
Improvement often looks messy before it looks impressive. Whether you are building a business, learning sales, becoming a better leader, creating marketing content, or putting systems in place, there is usually a stretch where the new way feels worse than the old way.
Old habits feel comfortable because you have repeated them for years. You do not have to think much about them. You know the moves, the words, the process, and the routine.
New habits make you think. They force you to replace old muscle memory with something unfamiliar. That is why a better golf swing can initially feel awkward. It is also why a better sales conversation, leadership approach, or marketing strategy can feel completely unnatural at first.
The work does not necessarily get easier right away. You get better at doing the work.
Too many people quit during that uncomfortable phase because they assume the discomfort is evidence that something is wrong. But it may actually be evidence that you are developing a skill you did not have before.
You have to be uncomfortable before you get comfortable.
Take a look at the areas where you automatically fall back into the same routine. Those routines may feel safe, but they may also be limiting your next level of growth.
In golf, I can easily slip back into my old swing after only a few days away from the course. It feels more natural because it is the swing I have always used. The problem is that it is also the swing that keeps me playing like a 23-handicap golfer.
Business works the same way. You may be doing something a certain way because it feels familiar, not because it is producing the best result.
Ask yourself:
Comfort is not always the enemy, but it can absolutely become a trap when it keeps you from improving.
A new habit cannot be judged after one week.
That is the trap a lot of people fall into. They try a new sales technique, leadership strategy, marketing routine, or operating procedure for a few days. It feels weird. Results are not instant. Then they decide it did not work and go straight back to the old habit.
That is like taking one golf lesson, skipping practice for several days, forgetting the steps, and returning to the same swing that got you stuck in the first place.
If you want a different result, you have to give the new method enough time to become familiar.
A good rule is to commit to a meaningful period of consistency. Think in months, not days. Give yourself six months of intentional practice before deciding whether the approach truly works.
That does not mean blindly repeating something that is clearly ineffective. It means not quitting simply because the process feels uncomfortable in the beginning.
Sales is one of the clearest examples of this principle.
Many of us want to talk through the entire sales process. We want to explain everything, prove our value, fill every pause, and make sure the customer knows exactly what we can do. The problem is that great sales conversations are not just about talking. They are about asking better questions and listening closely to the answers.
That silence can feel brutal at first.
You may ask a question and immediately feel the need to jump in. You may wonder whether you are saying enough. You may feel like you are losing control of the conversation because you are not doing all the talking.
But when you ask the right questions, listen carefully, and give people space to respond, you build more trust. Over time, that can lead to more closed business.
Here is a practical way to work on it:
If you are going on five or six bids each month and closing only one or two, improving your process enough to close three or four can make a major difference in your business.
That is why practicing the uncomfortable stuff matters.
Leadership brings its own version of discomfort.
Delegating is hard when you know exactly how you want a task completed. It is tempting to just do it yourself because it is faster, easier, and probably closer to your personal standard.
But if you do everything yourself, you become the bottleneck. Every decision, every task, every problem, and every process has to go through you. That is not a scalable business. That is a job where you happen to have employees around you.
Delegation requires you to take a step back and let someone else learn.
That might mean explaining the task, showing them the process, and then sitting back while they do it differently than you would. You may have to bite your tongue. You may have to sit on your hands. You may need to allow someone to make a few mistakes while they build competence.
That is uncomfortable, but it is how your team grows.
When you stay with that process, your team becomes more capable and your business becomes less dependent on you.
Marketing is another area where people give up way too soon.
The first time you record a video, it can feel like pins and needles. You may hate seeing yourself on camera. You may overthink your voice, your face, your message, or whether anyone even cares.
The same thing happens with social media. You post consistently for a while, get only a couple of likes, and start thinking the whole thing is nuts.
But consistency has a way of working quietly before you see obvious results.
A customer or potential customer may eventually tell you they have been seeing your content for months. They may not have liked every post. They may not have commented. But they noticed you, and they started to recognize your business.
That is why you cannot judge your marketing efforts by a single post or a single week.
Build the habit:
You have to get worse before you get better. More accurately, you may have to feel worse before your new skill starts to show results.
Systems and processes can feel tedious when you are busy running a business. Writing standard operating procedures, documenting tasks, and creating repeatable workflows may seem like extra work that you do not have time for.
It is easy to ask, “When is this ever going to matter?”
It matters when you want your business to run more smoothly without every little thing requiring your involvement. It matters when you hire someone. It matters when you need consistency. It matters when you want to build a real business instead of relying on memory and chaos.
Putting SOPs in place may not feel exciting, but over time those systems create a business that can operate with more consistency and less dependence on the owner.
Start small:
You do not need to build every system in a day. You just need to keep building.
Feelings are useful, but they are not always accurate indicators of progress.
A new swing may feel strange even while your shots become more consistent. A new sales process may feel awkward even while your close percentage increases. Delegation may feel risky even while your employees become more confident and capable.
That is why you need to come up for air periodically and look at the data.
For example:
If you are applying a new approach consistently and the numbers are improving, stay with it. Do not abandon something effective just because it has not fully become comfortable yet.
James Clear has a great idea: every action you take is a vote for the kind of person you want to become.
That is powerful because it removes the pressure of needing to be perfect today. You do not have to become an elite salesperson, leader, marketer, golfer, or business owner overnight. You just need to keep casting votes through your actions.
Every time you ask a better question in a sales meeting, you are voting for the salesperson you want to become.
Every time you delegate instead of taking the task back, you are voting for the leader you want to become.
Every time you record the video, post the content, document the process, or have the difficult conversation, you are voting for the business owner you want to become.
Jocko Willink’s message that discipline creates freedom fits here too. The discipline to keep practicing, keep learning, and keep showing up eventually gives you more freedom. You become more capable. Your team becomes stronger. Your business becomes healthier. Your results become less dependent on luck.
Do not judge a new habit by how it feels during the first week. Judge it by who it can help you become over the next five years.
If you are learning something new and feel like you are getting worse, do not panic. Everyone goes through that phase. It is part of the process.
Keep pushing yourself through the discomfort. Keep practicing until the new skill becomes familiar. Keep going long enough to see the results of your effort.
Six months from now, you may look back and realize that the difficult, awkward stage was not proof that you were failing. It was the exact point where you started improving.
Choose one area where you have been tempted to return to old habits because the new approach felt awkward.
Maybe it is sales. Maybe it is leadership. Maybe it is marketing, hiring, systems, or a personal goal outside of business.
Pick the skill. Commit to practicing it consistently. Track the results. Give yourself time.
Stay uncomfortable long enough to grow.
Be grateful, find opportunities to serve others, and be happy.
For more conversations on entrepreneurship, motivation, and building a better business, follow the Idaho Business Podcast on Apple Podcasts or listen on Spotify.
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