Describe a time you tried something new

The new thing I tried was a cold-water swimming group, about eight months ago. I tried it because a colleague wouldn't stop talking about it, and because I'd noticed I only ever did things I was already reasonably good at. That's a comfortable way to live and a slow way to improve. How did it go? Badly, at first, and in a way I hadn't predicted. I expected the cold to be the problem. The actual problem was the breathing — when you get into cold water your body forces a gasp and then short panicky breaths, and you can't just decide to stop. I lasted about ninety seconds the first time and got out feeling slightly humiliated, mostly because there was a woman in her seventies still in there, quite relaxed. By the fourth or fifth time it changed. Not because I got tougher, but because I learned to breathe out slowly before getting in. One technique, and the whole thing became manageable. Would I do it again? I still go, roughly once a week. But the thing I took from it isn't the swimming. It's that I was wrong about which part would be hard, and I'd have never found that out by thinking about it. You can only find out by getting in. That's a fairly obvious lesson, I know. It didn't feel obvious until it happened to me.