Are You Unconsciously Incompetent?

If I said you were consciously incompetent would you Thank me or hit me!!?

I hope you wouldn’t hit me because being consciously incompetent would mean that you had taken a big step and recognised an issue or behaviour that was no longer working for you.

We seldom notice the things that we do which don’t actually work too well for us until someone else draws our attention to it.

At this point we go from being unconsciously incompetent to consciously incompetent which is definitely a step in the right direction as we have become aware of the unhelpful behaviour pattern or habit.

Although we may not immediately be able to do anything about it, once we have flagged and noted this in our mind, we have interrupted the cycle.

Having started to notice these unhelpful behaviours or habits we will begin to think about alternatives behaviours that might serve us better, and slowly begin to implement these into our daily lives. This would initially be done in a conscious, deliberate way so we would be consciously competent: in other words, showing more resourceful behaviour but not automatically.

After we have practised this enough (and this is usually the most challenging part!) these alternative, more resourceful behaviours will eventually completely replace the old ones without us having to go through a conscious thought process and we will be unconsciously competent. Hey presto another new habit is formed!

So, there we have it. If you are noticing things that aren’t working you are consciously incompetent which is definitely a step in the right direction.