Joy is Where it’s At
Learning New Things, Part Two: Conscious Incompetence
The message here is “who I am is enough!”
Give yourself permission to be an expert — wherever you are in your stage of learning, and remember that your stage of development is constantly changing. You will know more tomorrow, next week, and next month than you do now. Does this make what you know today to be less valuable?
Not at all! If we do not value and honour what we know today, whatever we learn will never be enough and we will never be satisfied, since there is always more to learn. Just as you cannot stop aging, you cannot stop the process of learning. On the other hand…
At the conscious incompetence stage you may begin to ask yourself if you want to invest the time and resources to become as skilled as you first imagined yourself becoming. You might find yourself considering one of these options:
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to keep going and delve deeper, perhaps taking courses or finding a mentor,
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to keep going but feel like a fake because you ‘aren’t really doing it’,
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to quit or adjust your expectations.
Keep Going and Delve Deeper
Once you get a glimpse of what it might take to truly master something it can feel overwhelming. To keep going can require courage. You may feel vulnerable in the beginning but as you gain confidence, there are rewards on many levels: confidence, self esteem and the pleasure of doing something well.
Feeling like a Fake
“Fake it ‘til you make it” is a perfectly legitimate way to act while you are learning something. You can actually have a lot of fun with this.
One of the exercises used in vocal technique is to sing as an opera star would sing. How would an opera singer hold his or her body? What would the sound they produce be like? When even young children are given this exercise they produce a richer singing tone. Just holding your body differently produces a noticeable change.
This technique can be used for learning anything. Take an ‘expert’ in the field you are learning as an example, or imagine such a person. How would she carry herself? How might she interact with others? What he say and do? You can even continue this exercise to include what clothes would they wear, what their home would look like. How do they get around? Do they drive a car or ride a bike. Try it…this can be a lot of fun and it also works to help you overcome feeling like a fake.
Deciding to Quit or Changing Expectations
If things are not progressing as fast as you would like them to, you simply do not enjoy it as much as you imagined, or if you realise that it will take more time and effort to become as expert as you would like, allow yourself to change your mind.
Deciding to quit - or to continue as a beginner, is perfectly acceptable. It does not have to be all or nothing. Perhaps doing something ‘just for fun’ at the beginner’s stage is where you really want to be. Here is a story from my own life, of something that I recently learned.
Many years ago I decided I wanted to play the flute. As a beginner in music I did not realize what I was getting into, and about six months into music lessons I quit. The progress I was making was painfully slow and I wasn’t really enjoying it. Still I held on to that flute, thinking I would find a different teacher one day, or even teach myself enough to play ‘free-style’. Then I discovered Native American flutes. I picked up one at a trade show and realized I could play it right away and that even as a beginner pretty much anything you do on the Native American flute sounds good. Of course experienced Native American flutists sound incredible, but as soon as I picked it up I knew it was the instrument for me.
In the grand scheme of things, joy is where it’s at. The inner work in the consciious incompetence stage of learning is to find the joy and happiness of the beginner’s mind and bring that feeling with you as you develop a deeper level of skill.
© Deborah Redfern, 2008. All rights reserved.
Feng Shui, Inner Knowing and Learning New Things
Learning New Things, Part One: Unconscious Incompetence
Painting Class - My Starry Night
Last weekend I happened upon a summer festival where there had been a juried plein-air art show. I only caught the end part as the awards were being announced. The adjudicator was explaining that the pieces they awarded prizes to were those that had captured the energy and spirit of the festival. They were not necessarily the most technically developed among those who had entered the competition.
He went on to say that if someone sticks with painting long enough their technique would improve but eventually they would hit a wall and that wall is Themselves. In other words, in going deeply into any art (and probably all and everything in life) our biggest block is not skills and konwledge, but what we find inside ourselves with all our human mixture of fear, pride and ego.
This got me thinking about feng shui, inner knowing and how the 4 stages of learning all fit together.
The 4 distinctive stages of skill development are: 1 - unconscious incompetence, 2 - conscious incompetence, 3 - conscious competence and 4 - unconscious competence.
Unconscious incompetence is when you don’t know what you don’t know. It is in this ‘beginner’s mind’ that we are often the most joyful and happy, not yet being aware of the rules and the ‘right’ way to do things. The painting ”My Starry Night” I did in an art class as an interpration of Van Gogh’s style is just such an example. I had fun painting it and I enjoy the mystical quality about it.
There is no real reason to move from unconscious incompetence in the creative arts, either in your own creative endeavors or in purchasing art work for your home. Interior Alignment ™ says that if it feels good, it is good feng shui.
Many famous folk artists fall into this category. Nova Scotian painter Maud Lewis sold her paintings for under $10 when she was living and I recently saw one original being auctioned with the estimated selling price of $3,500 - $4,500. I do not know why certain pieces of art or artists becomes so valuable, but I do enjoy Maud Lewis’ art. They have a good energy about them.
It may be that we feel pressure, both from ourselves and from others around us, to move too quickly out of beginner’s mind. It is almost as if as soon as we show some interest and promise in an area we feel compelled to become as good as we can and sometimes in this pursuit, the pleasure is dimished. How great it would be if we could take up painting, drawing, dance or singing and be joyful in doing an activity just for the pleasure of doing it without expectations.
On ‘hitting the wall’, in the first stage even though you may be perfectly happy, critical feedback from others can burst your bubble which can then lead to fears arising; leading to self doubt and loss of confidence. Of course it is other people’s own fears and self doubts that lead them to be critical in the first place.
The wall can stop you in your tracks (you give up — pronouce yourself a failure and never try again), or it can represent an opportunity to move to the next stage where you begin to learn and develop. Another possibility is that you can break the wall down and continue doing what you were doing, enjoying the blissful beginner’s mind. Remember, if it feels good, it is good feng shui!
© Copyright Deborah Redfern, 2008. All rights reserved.
More on Vacations
My colleague Neshi Lokotz wrote a wonderful piece earlier in the spring on the Where Energy Flows blog about what to do when your home away from home doesn’t feel so good. I smiled when I read parts of Feng Shui Teachers on Vacation. Neshi wrote: “We dismantled the single bed and it moved between the fire place and a large walk in closet which was in the main room. We also moved the small club chairs. One chair was moved to a corner we had designated for reading and the other chair next to the fire place. The second bed was in an windowed alcove that opened into the main room.”
I have re-arranged hotel rooms as well, but never going to the extent of taking a bed apart! It just goes to show what can happen you you get two feng shui teachers in the same room!
Read the article here: Feng Shui Teachers on Vacation
© Deborah Redfern, 2008. All rights reserved.
The Energy of Vacations
Have you ever visited a different city or town and loved it so much you decided to go back again to recapture that memory — only to be disappointed? More often than not return visits are disappointing because each time is a totally different experience.
Every place has its own vibration - the energy and ‘feel’ of a place. Even different neighbourhoods in the same city have a unique vibration (so staying at a different hotel or resort in the same city can give your trip a totally different feel.) It is also true that the vibration of a city changes over time so that when you visit it again, the change is obvious, even though the people who live there may not have noticed. The same is happening in your own neighbourhood, town or city…visitors will notice changes more than you will. Most change is so gradual we do not notice. This does not apply to sudden changes, of course, such as trees that have been felled, or the damage following a fire or a violent storm.
In addition your personal energy field or vibration is also changing continuously so you can never really recapture a time, location or a feeling, even if everything seems on the surface to be the way you remember it.
You might also have had the experience of planning and waiting for a trip, all the while building it up and imagining every detail, so that the reality once you get there cannot compete with the image you have created. (My personal experience is that this is what can happen when you plan to experience something the second time. The second Cruise I eagerly anticipated did not live up to the first one I took, when all was fresh and new.) All of this puts an interesting spin on how we experience our holidays and vacations. Most of us go through life believing that we will have another chance to go back and do something ‘right’. Eckhart Tolle writes in A New Earth:
“People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens for their happiness, that is to say, dependent on form. They don’t realize that what happens is the most unstable thing in the universe. It changes constantly. They look upon the present moment as either marred by something that has happened and shouldn’t have or as deficient because of something that has not happened but should have.”
If you are upset on arriving at your dream destination because it isn’t as you remembered it last time, or something has happened to ‘ruin’ things: perhaps your luggage is delayed or the accommodation is not what you expected, try to avoid the temptation to compare, or to tell yourself that you will have a perfect trip next time. I am not saying that we have to pretend all is well even when it is not, but instead to acknowledge and then let it go. The perfection is in how fully we are able to attend to the energy of the moment. Allow yourself to experience unique energy of the time and and place, which by nature can never be re-created in the same way again. Each moment in time and space is precious, because of its unique constantly changing energy vibration.
© Deborah Redfern, 2008. All rights reserved.
Riding the Waves
Life has been throwing the bigger questions of life at me lately: Decisions about what path to take and whether decisions I have made are good ones.
Actually if often feels to me more like riding the waves than choosing a path. One can ride a wave with grace and awareness, or be in for a bumpy ride. A bumpy ride is when instead of fully experiencing the wave you’ve been given, you spend your time looking at the other waves, wondering which one is better.
Looking at decisions: well isn’t that often an impossible place to be? We can evaluate from afar, from a place of distance or time when we can be objective, but in the moment we just do not know.
I recently came across a commencement address given by author Anna Quindlen in 2000. This brilliant essay will help anyone who is worrying about paths to take and decisions to be made. She writes:
“All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of the azaleas, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of our kid’s eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live.” Anna Quindlen.
In other words, it is all about quality of life. What makes you feel healthy and whole? What are you tolerating because you belief you have to? After reading the address I felt more at ease with myself and willing to be present for my current ‘ride’.
You can read the full commencement address by Anna Quindlen here: http://www.cs.oswego.edu/~wender/quindlen.html
Copyright Deborah Redfern, 2008. All rights reserved.
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