An extreme example, but: I used to watch this channel from a guy that built canoes and kayaks in both modern and traditional styles. He says in some videos that the traditional hunting kayaks are incredibly unstable and uncomfortable to use, because that instability granted them superior agility for hunting.
Something about how they shared the link encoded a preference for the desktop version of YouTube, but since you’re on iOS, I have stripped all of that off their link:
Canoes, I’ve been in canoes that are destined to flip whether I want them to or not (although they were overloaded, or may have had some traitors aboard).
I think the difference is stroke technique? I'm sure I'm instinctively trying to paddle a kayak like I would a canoe, and they don't like that. If I had more opportunity I'd get someone to teach me proper kayak stroke shapes, and then they'd probably feel more friendly.
The thing is that people with "talent" are often just people who did what you're trying to do for fun their whole lifes. So talent then is just code for: "had a natural preference for doing it and both the means and time to do it".
to be okay with repeatedly looking dumb in public
It is the same with going to the gym for the first time.
I think one of the most important things I ever learned is that hard things take time. There is an obvious relationship between the effort required and the size of the undertaking, but also the worthiness of the effort. In other words: rarely, if ever, can you build great things in a short amount of time or with little effort.
And that's where this post makes sense: to build something great or to solve something hard, you have to show up every day and chip away at the problem, piece by piece. The progress will be slow and nearly invisible to you as you experience it, and is usually only clear in hindsight after a year or two (or more), when you can look back and see all that's changed -- hopefully for the better -- since you started.
> Kayaking taught me to be okay with repeatedly looking dumb in public.
I had the same thing when I first started running, in my early 50s. I'm sure I looked absolutely ridiculous. (I'm fairly sure I still do, I just stopped caring.) When I first started I would go out around 6am, partly because it was cooler but mostly so I wouldn't be seen. I've chatted to other runners who were the same, even keeping it secret from their family.
Getting over that has been a very positive change, and a generally-applicable one. I've just started blogging publicly, which would historically have triggered the same kind of looking-like-an-idiot phobias.
There was a post (maybe saw it here, maybe on Reddit) about sucking in public being a kind of moat for all sorts of interesting things. Crossing it gets you to places you otherwise couldn't go.
Another point that might apply is that OP probably has a high center of gravity which can make kayaking really challenging. They should probably clarify this.