I am so glad you decided to read this, please subscribe to my bog. I’m going to take a couple of minutes on here to NOT talk about what you need to learn, but instead show you how to learn. Not what to think, but how to think. This concept was shared to me about 7 years ago from a mentor of mine and it has drastically improved my life long learning journey.

This gentleman, explained the concept that people go to school, learning math for 12, 15, sometimes 20 years, because of college, and that some people are going to go through 20 years learning basically the same subjects, and then my mentor started to explain to me that people are going to do that because they want to be competent in a given area in their career. We have all heard repetition is the mother of learning. Repetition is to develop our minds in the evolutionary process of learning called ‘The Four Stages of Competence’ and this is ALL we need to learn to learn anything and everything we want.

Some people go to school for X amount of years just so they can make X amount of dollars in their career and earn a living.

“Formal education earns you a living, self education will make you earn a fortune” – Jim Rohn

Learn this information and you can learn anything you want and you will earn your fortune. This theory will earn you more money in one month than doctors and lawyers with earn in an entire year. Learn this concept and it will also serve you well in all the other areas in life; spiritual, family, health and finance, it will bring you exponential return as time carries on. Understand, “The Four Stages of Competence” is how we learn anything. Lets dive right in.

‘Four Stages of Competence’
1st “Unconsciously Incompetent”	2nd “Consciously Incompetent”
3rd “Consciously Competent”	4th “Unconsciously Competent”

In simplicity, Unconscious incompetent means; you don’t know what you don’t know. Here is an example, when we were toddlers, before we really had the ability to think and use our brains… Well know a lot of adults that still don’t use heir brains now…lol, but when we were toddlers, we didn’t have the ability to use our brains but then we started noticing things, we started noticing people had the ability to walk around and as we start to grow older, one year maybe older, we realize and finally take notice and I see people walking on two legs and then you realize you have two legs also therefore you might be able to do what they do and then we start to attempt this walking thing. At an early age we intuitively notice, success leaves clues, we see that the two legs we have, are similar to the two legs other people have, and if they can walk then so can also walk J We start to say “wait, those are legs” and we start to know now what we once did not know previously know and now we know we can not walk YET.

Now we go from unconsciously incompetent to consciously incompetent. Before we didn’t know we had legs and people who have legs walk but now we know we have legs, and we’re starting to learn what it means to have legs, therefore we have an opportunity to become consciously competent. Not everyone will humble themselves to say, I know I do NOT know, and yet this is the key to achieving true wisdom.

A wise man once said the more I learn the more I realize I know nothing at all.

To be competent we must first know we are ignorant. For example, you may start a new business or you start a new career, or start an entrepreneur venture, health diet or maybe you become a pastor at a new church, or start a new relationship. At the beginning, you don’t know what you don’t need to know but if your humble, you do know you need to learn something and you may not even know where to begin. You start the career optimistic and hopeful, but you also know that there’s going to be a lot of skills you will need to learn and there’s going to be resources, and contacts you’re going to need to learn along the way but you don’t know exactly what you need to learn, all the details wont be reveled until you actually step into that role. If you walked into a room saying you know everything, not only does your posture tell the people you don’t care about their input but you actually limit your ability to learn anything new from your team and like the wonderful adage says “if your not learning your dying”. This type of humility is so critical for learning but even more critical for leaders to not undermined their teams.

Now that we are aware of what we need to learn, we can actually start learning. As we learn things we all know that we have to think about them. For example when we’re learning numbers, first we didn’t know what numbers were (unconsciously incompetent), then we know about the basics of numbers (consciously incompetent) but then we start using numbers in math; 1 + 1, 1 + 2, 2 + 2 and all those number games, I don’t know about you, but I used to take these timed tests and they would be going through your speed and accuracy of learning the numbers through your subconscious I was never very good at them, I was never very good at school and all, but these tests used to test out competence in the numbers. At one point in our learning we were eventually able to calculate the numbers at such a speed it was like we didn’t even have to think about it and yet not too long ago I had to use my fingers and was consciously competent, I actually had to think about it too much. In the beginning, I took my time to calculate; sometimes I would use my fingers too. Just like we all remember that stage, when we were doing our jobs for sales and marketing, when we were trying to read a script, we don’t memorize the entire script and we would lose track of where we are, but then eventually get back on track, in this stage we are consciously competent of it, we’re using our mind to think.

Then, the next phase is unconsciously competent – If you are having difficulty with a subject, task, or skill Keep moving forward and understand this, a child that’s beginning to walk, how long does it take the child to learn? How long do they take to learn? It doesn’t matter, lol… they just do it until they walk, they learn until they actually know how. If you have a goal, you need to be childish in the sense that you will need the faith to know you will learn eventually. Children are consciously competent about walking but as adults we walk and don’t even think about it any more. I don’t walk today and while I am walking think left, right, left, right, I don’t say anything today, lol… I now walk without thinking about it. Just like walking, we have other tasks and/or skills that we do without thinking about. Most people call this a habit 

I encourage you to continue to learn your skill until you could do it without thinking about it, become unconsciously competent of what your skill actually is and master it by taking the time to practice.

Practice does NOT make perfect, it is perfect practice that makes perfect performance.

Thank you guys so much for reading this article and I pray you gained value from learning the Four Stages of Competence, “unconsciously incompetent”, “consciously incompetent”, “consciously competent” and “unconsciously competent”.

Learn this, read it again, watch the video on YouTube and remember, repetition is the mother of learning but action is the father.

If you gained valuated today, please leave me a comment and connect with me on the socials