Wedding Business Solutions

Unfamiliar or familiar, not difficult or easy!

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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Are you hesitant to try something new because it feels difficult—or is it just unfamiliar? What if you started thinking about your challenges not as “hard” or “easy,” but as “unfamiliar” or “familiar”? In this episode, I share how reframing your mindset can make learning and growth feel more achievable, whether you’re mastering a new skill in your wedding business or tackling something outside your comfort zone.

Listen to this new 7-minute episode for a mindset shift that helps you embrace the unfamiliar, keep moving forward, and find mastery in the areas that matter most to you.


If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

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View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/



Want to see about joining an upcoming mastermind (bring together some industry friends to have me spend a day with you all) - or arranging one of your own (yes, I'll come to you!)? Reach out to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or text or call +1.732.422.6362

I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

Not difficult or easy, unfamiliar or familiar. Listen to this episode. See where I'm going with this. Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I'm listening to a book called Effortless Mastery. It's by Kenny Werner. It's actually about music and musicians and talk about mastery of that.

But it really does apply to a lot of other things in life. I'm not quite done with it yet, but I just heard today I was walking through the airport, I heard a part where he said, it's, don't think of things as difficult or easy. Think of them as unfamiliar or familiar. And it changes your mindset, because difficult gives the impression I may not be able to do something. Whereas unfamiliar says, I'm not able to do this because I'm just not familiar with it. And of course, he's using music in there. And talk about playing a piece of music. If you're not familiar with it and you put the music in front of you, you're going to have to work to learn how to play that and play that the right way.

And it's certainly the same for anything in life. You know, just arranging flowers a certain way, or if you're a dj, mixing songs a certain way, or if you're a photographer getting a certain effect. Right? Or using a new camera even. It's. It's not familiar. The buttons aren't familiar. The where the adjustments are is not familiar. I thought that was just so.

So I don't know if profound is the right word, but just such a different way to look at this. And I love that. So instead of thinking about things that we're trying to do, difficult or easy, making them unfamiliar or familiar. So every day when I do my French lessons, you probably know that I'm doing my language lessons. I do French every day. And there are some things that are familiar. I'm able to get that lesson correct. And there are things that are not familiar, like, wow, I don't know that word.

That's a new word. Or I don't know that the tense of that word, the future tense, the past tense, or whatever. So just approaching whatever it is you're about to do, and if you've done it before, it's familiar. So if I go to play golf, and I don't play golf often, but when I do, it's familiar enough that I know, okay, I think I need this club, and I know how to hold the club and do all those things, but we take that for granted because it was Unfamiliar at one point, right? The first time you did anything, it was unfamiliar. If you don't play golf holding a golf club, a little awkward in the beginning because it's not a familiar way. It's not like you're playing mini golf, playing, you know, real golf. I don't know if that's the right word, real golf. But playing, you know, golf on a golf course, holding the clubs and swinging the clubs.

You hold the club and it. It. It's kind of an awkward thing until it becomes familiar. So what is it that you're not starting? Because it's unfamiliar. And if you say, okay, is it because I think it's difficult. See, I. I like to do things that are difficult and. And maybe rephrase that.

I'm not afraid to try things that are difficult. It's only difficult because I haven't done it before or haven't done it enough. That's another thing as well. There are things that we've done, but we just haven't done enough of it to get a level of mastery. Right. Mastery means you've done it enough that you can do it without having to think about the nuts and bolts of it. As a matter of. The whole concept of this book of effortless mastery is that when you get to that point of mastery and when you let yourself go and you let go and you just let your expertise that you've gained from that in that mastery just go, it's happening almost on autopilot, but it's really not.

It's because you've done all the work to that point. And I can certainly relate to that. There are times when I'm, you know, playing the piano and thinking about everything I'm playing, and there are times where it's just like my fingers are just working on their own. And you. I hope you've gotten that. Some might call it Flow, which is another book that I just finished reading. You know, you get into that zone where you're not even thinking about what you're doing, you're doing it, but it's because you've done the work to get to that point. So think about the next time you were approaching something, and if your mind goes to, wow, that's difficult.



Is that a bad thing? Or is it just, wow, I'm not familiar enough with that to be able to do this better. But I want to work at it. And that's my thing with learning French. I do it every morning, because if I don't do it every morning, then it'll go two Mornings without, or three mornings without, next thing you know, you're not doing it. And anybody who's listening, who's started to learn on Duolingo or Babel or whatever and lost their streak. Right. You know, once you've lost your streak, it's easier to keep that non streak going longer. You kind of get a streak of not doing it, I guess.

So that's why I just do every day. Every day is every day, even if it's just one lesson. Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's not. But every day there's a little bit. And I've become comfortable with the fact that when it's hard is actually my favorite parts, because that means I don't know it. It means it's unfamiliar. That also goes back. I've mentioned this on another podcast about Adam Grant's book, Hidden Potential.

So Adam Grant is a professor at the Wharton School in Philadelphia, and he's got a podcast and he's got a bunch of books that I like, but Hidden Potential, the same thing. Are you okay not being good at something and yet you'll still move ahead, or do you give it up when it gets hard? And he did talk about people who've become good at languages as adults. They were not good at children. And that's because you're okay not being good not being comfortable. And then the whole Malcolm gladwell and outliers, 10,000 hours. A lot of the books that I've been reading and mentioning are talking about how it's not just 10,000 hours. What did you do in that 10,000 hours? Was it purposeful practice? So when I do a French lesson, I'm purposefully trying to get better. I'm not just going through the motions.

So when the gamification offers for me to jump ahead two or three or sometimes four steps, I never do it. Because my goal is not to finish the lesson, finish the game. My goal is to be fluent. So I need to go through all these steps. And even if it takes more time, I'm okay with that. And that's, again, it's unfamiliar. I'm going to learn something new as opposed to it's unfamiliar. I don't even want to try.

So just something to think about. I heard him say that in the book. Again, it's Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner. It is about musicians and things, but there's a lot of lessons in there for anybody trying to master anything. Just really interesting. But that whole phrasing of unfamiliar or familiar, instead of being difficult or easy, I think that was just something I wanted to share. Thanks for listening.

I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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