When I was younger, I took the test to become a ski instructor. They graded your teaching and your skiing. Afterwards, I felt pretty darn good about it.

But I failed. It seems I had aced the teaching portion but my skiing wasn’t as good as I thought.

Two months later, I took the test again. This time, I was worried. I was paying attention to my skiing, and I didn’t think I’d leveled up at all. All I could see was how I could be doing better. I thought “if I didn’t pass last time, I won’t pass this time.” But I showed up, and I did my best.

And I passed.

There’s a few takeaways here that I want to acknowledge. The first is it’s a great example of the four steps of learning:

Unconscious Incompetence - You don’t know what you don’t know
Conscious Incompetence - You now know what you don’t know
Conscious Competence - You now know what you’ve learned
Unconscious Competence - You have internalized what you know and it’s on autopilot.

We all go through this process again and again, as we level up our skills.

What happened with me was an illustration of me making it up to the next level and seeing how much more there was for me to learn.

Another one of the things I find interesting about this is the chatter our mind engages in when we’re in these types of situations. My mind was constantly talking to me while I was skiing - what are you doing, you messed that up, you need to do more, do better.

And I was constantly talking to my mind: Paul, you got it, just keep going. Do this, then do this. You’re good.

Our mind can help us, and can hinder us.

I just read this book, Chatter by Ethan Kross. It’s about how to harness the power of the mind. One of the things that really stuck with me was when he said:

If we think we have the resources to handle something, it’s a challenge. If we don’t have the resources to handle it, it’s a threat.

And I’d change that just a little bit: What’s actually important is not whether we have the resources. What’s important is whether we think we have the resources.

And all of this, when distilled, comes down to the feeling of being in control. A lack of control will spike your chatter.

Kross says control requires the belief that:

I can exert my will
The world is orderly and predictable

If we feel like we’re in control, we’re more likely to see something as a challenge, and less as a threat.

When you make it a habit to exert your will, even in the smallest things, you build up an identity of yourself as someone who can and does exert their will.

And when you exert your will you feel as if more things are in your control. Even if it’s something small.

What’s one little thing where you want to exert your will today?

Join us this week as we discuss this and more.

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Managing Internal Chatter