Learn 3 steps to your success now. Everyone I have ever met, and believe me I have met what you might call some very unsuccessful people are successful at some things at least some of the time. The problem is that many people who are successful much of the time have no idea how they did it.
One term used to describe this is ‘unconscious competence’. What this term means is that you may be consistently able to do well at a particular task or job, but you have no idea how you are creating the results.
So how do you make something you are unconsciously competent at conscious, so you can then do it more often when you need it.
First, lets use an example.
Let’s say that you often do presentations for your work and you are pretty good at doing presentations. You are ‘unconsciously competent’. However, you would like to become really good at doing presentations.
Before you can improve your abilities to present, you first must become conscious of what you do when you present. But here is the important part, you don’t want to study the presentations you have done that were ordinary, no, you have to choose one that you did when you were at your best.
Let’s go through the process. I will continue to use the example of public speaking/presenting, but you can apply this process to anything you want to improve.
The first key is:
1. Recall: Close your eyes, begin breathing deeply and recall a time when you performed at a very high level. Immerse yourself in the memory as deeply as you can remembering what you saw, heard, felt and anything else that comes to mind.
Awareness: As you are recalling the experience, start to notice what is happening in your mind and body.
2. Analyze: Notice how your body feels, what sensations are you getting, how are you breathing, what is your posture like, what images or thoughts are running through your mind, what do you feel emotionally and what are you doing specifically in this memory?
3. Specify: As you are noticing, ask yourself what were the most effective things you were doing when doing that task.
Example: When I was presenting I was standing really tall and breathing deeply and I kept thinking to myself ‘I will win this contract, I will win this contract’, and I was visualizing signing it before I started to speak.
Replicate: Now that you know what you did, do it again! Follow the exact same procedure the next time you are in a similar situation (e.g. presenting). Just spend a minute or so before you have to do it going through this process so that you will be able to perform at your best.
Additional Tip: Find Role-Models: What if you want to perform well at something you have never performed well at before, or you want to learn how to become even better at it. The answer is find one or better yet, a few people who do it well and ask them how they do it using the same above process. Then pick the things they do that you like the most and try them for yourself until you find the right combination for you.
To your Success and Fulfilling Happiness,
Aleks Srbinoski
