Lately I’ve been acquainting myself with an uncomfortable feeling: I’ve been going to workout classes at my health club and feeling incompetent.

Pathetic, even! The kickboxing class was challenging, invigorating…and mystifying. I’m a good verbal learner—I know how to read, write, and think my way through a problem—but I’m not a good visual learner. I can’t watch you do the kickboxing routine perfectly and quickly imitate your moves. Step aerobics: same thing. I kept at it—I stayed till the bitter end, dammit!—but I had to stay close to one particular move that I could do, and just keep doing it while the instructor taught to the top of the class. Spin class is much easier on the self-esteem, if not the body: I can’t humiliate myself too much when riding a stationary bike. Coming up: aquafit, so I’ll have a chance to look the fool and be half naked all at the same time!

Why am I doing this? Of course I want to get in shape, and there’s no better time for that than these long summer days, especially since I finished up a ton of work projects last month and have a lot more time. I always feel better when I’m at fighting weight, which is a very personal measurement, as I’m sure you know. We all tend to like a certain weight, a certain feeling, a certain look. I’m not far away from it, but I have to work at it.

But I’m also doing it because I think it’s healthy to do things one isn’t good at. As a therapist, I have to be highly competent in my job: I’m working with human beings in vulnerable, complicated situations in their lives. I have to be tip top! But step class? That’s a perfect opportunity to get used to the feeling of incompetence. I say this not because it’s fun or virtuous to feel silly or make a fool of yourself, but because it teaches you that you will spend your life getting better at things, so it’s good to cultivate a healthy humility about it. I’m always learning, and there’s a time in the trajectory of learning when the learner feels incompetent.

Which brings me to the work I do with clients. I often wonder (sometimes aloud, sometimes not…depends!) whether certain clients are highly uncomfortable with feeling incompetent. None of us likes the feeling, but some of us are deeply uncomfortable with it. So when they discover their incompetence at, say, relationship skills, they get resistant, distant, frustrated, even furious. Their partner has to drag them to counseling, and they sit there, arms folded, fending off the feeling that they’re just not that good at all this relationshippy-talky stuff. So I invite them to, well, look at it the way you’d look at a step aerobics class. (Unless you happen to be excellent at that!) Embrace your incompetence. Realize you’ve got a lot to learn, and everyone has been in this position. Take a deep breath, and start asking questions—of me, of your partner, and (most importantly) of yourself. What do you want to know? What do you want to learn? It’ll be hard to find out until you accept the fact that you’re not too good at this. (Yet!)

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