HOW CAN I BECOME
TRULY COMPETENT?
Competence is
everything! Well, almost everything. It is certainly why, in
Neuro-Semantics, we train, coach, consult, write, run practice groups, hold
conferences, etc. We do so in order to enable ourselves and others to become
competent at a whole variety of activities. From self-management to parenting,
to wealth creation, to leadership, to health and wellness, to eating right, to
sleeping soundly, etc., competence is our objective. We want people to
become self-determining and have the self-efficacy to be competent in the things
that they value.
When I say that competence is
everything, I’m thinking about the following applications. Competence is the
foundation of confidence. To be competent is to be confident and just about
everybody wants that—who doesn’t want to feel confident in what you do
and how you live? Consider the opposite: Confidence without competence means
you are fooling yourself and trying to con others into thinking you have skills
and you can do what you cannot do. The only way to feel truly and fully
confident is to become competent. But that’s actually a lot harder and more
complicated than most people image.
Competence is the foundation
for expertise. Let’s say that you want
to become an expert. What’s required for that? Basically, first develop your
basic competence, then add 10 years (or 10,000 hours) of deliberate practice,
and then you will develop expertise. This is the finding of Anders Ericcson in
his longitudinal studies on expertise. This also highlights that competence
is much more than merely having some skills. Yes, competence requires
skills and is built upon skill development. Yet, as noted in the first article,
you could have some skills and still not be competent.
Competence is the foundation
for self-trust. Once you develop a
skill, any skill, does not mean that you will always be able to demonstrate that
skill. Skill competence comes and goes. They depend on how you’re feeling, the
sleep you got the night before, how things are going in your life, etc.
Competence is a wavy line—up and down, on and off, good days and bad days. But
once you take the skill to the level of competence, you develop a basic
consistency that gives you much more control over the skill.
Competence is the foundation
for self-efficacy, which is the
foundation for entrepreneurship, and just about everything else, wealth
creation, risk taking, leadership, management, resilience, and the list goes on
and on. I hope the point is made— because competency is just about
everything in our lives, go for it! Aim to become competent. Don’t be
satisfied with being mediocre or just getting by.
Now for the
How
Because the skills which
are required for competence have to be developed one by one, you are going to
need a lot of patience. That means giving up your impatience. The
impatient who want to become competent over-night or in a weekend course are
those who will never become competent. Your skills will inevitably be on and
off as you go through the learning process. It is the nature of the beast.
Why? Because you are moving your conceptual knowledge into your neurology. And
that integration process takes time.
Along with patience, you are
going to need a powerful robust attitude toward mistakes and error messages.
That’s because you accelerate your learning process via the feedback
process. In other words, you have to be open to the error feedback messages.
If you make the fatal mistake of confusing your self (your ego, your worth as a
person) with what you do, your behavior, you will not learn very well and
it will take you a lot longer to become competent. So, release your ego!
Separate person from behavior. Stop making that fatal error. What you are
doing is just that— doing, behavior.
Next, practice one piece at
a time. Stop trying to do the whole competency or even the whole skill— set
your sights on the sub-skills. Deliberately focus your practice on each one so
that your cells fire together and you create a neural pattern in your
neurology. Once you do that, you will develop a consistency that you can
trust. This is the pathway to competency. Every manual that we have in
Neuro-Semantics has been developed specifically for this. For whatever
competency you want, open up your manual, find the sub-skills and practice them
over and over and over. That’s the key.
Keep yourself inspired
and therefore motivated by setting your
intention on developing the competency. Give yourself a great big why
and then meta-detail everything you do in your deliberate practice with
the big why. Refresh your why everyday you do your practice. As you do,
forget the results. That’s right! Forget the results, they will follow if you
do the process. So focus entirely and exclusively on the process. And what is
the process? Deliberately practicing the
sub-skills!
META-COACH
NEWS
·
The special book deal
continues, most Neuro-Semantic books for $10, Postal Box holds 10, shipping $100
for the box. In the USA, the shipping only $15. Write to me at meta@acsol.net.
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
ISNS Executive Director
P.O. Box 8
Clifton Colorado 81520 USA
(970) 523-7877
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