Standard transmissions, business coaching & consciousness! What do they have in common?

What do those three things have in common? ME!

my mazda (the "funnest" car ever)

A couple of years ago, I could drive a standard…if I was forced to. It was rough and jerky and I tended to just tell people I couldn’t, rather than get sucked into doing it. The suited me fine. My hubby had a standard, but my car was automatic, so I never needed to drive one. And he probably dreaded trying to be patient with me as I jerked and stalled and caused havoc with traffic, so he never forced me to.

Time to buy another car…and the one I wanted was a standard!

I actually never thought twice about it. I thought to myself…Hey, I have all the tools I need. I can do it, I just need practice and what better way to ensure that I practice, than to set myself up so that I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO. And this was the case with 2 standard vehicles in the family now.

To be honest, I had a buffer period. We kept my old car about a month, while I was learning. Eventually there comes a point where you’re either going to do it, or your not. And I invested a lot of money into it…so I HAD to. The other choice, to admit defeat and lose thousands of dollars trying to resell the thing (not to mention the time and the headache) just wasn’t an option for me. So I learned. And it didn’t take that long. When you immerse yourself in an environment where you have to succeed, you succeed much quicker.

The brain is a fascinating thing (much like automatic transmissions! I’m telling you, they are truly miraculous! If you’ve never had to drive a standard, you can’t possibly realize how masterful they actually are. To get a machine to do it so smoothly….).

There are 4 stages of learning.

1. Unconscious Unknown.

This is where you don’t even know what you don’t know. Years and years ago, when I learned the basics of driving as a teenager, I didn’t know all of the stuff that went into driving! I never paid attention to the different kinds of signs, and what everything meant, and how to actually get from one place to another without hitting anything, or killing anyone.  My coaching is the same. My first year in business, I had absolutely NO CLUE! I thought I did, but there is so much to know it’s impossible for anyone to figure it all out on their own, and be successful in the first year. (Hiring my own coach was the best choice of my life…because she is in  a very advanced and aware stage 3).

2. Conscious Unknown

This is when I knew I couldn’t drive a standard. I sucked at it. Same with business (or anything else, really). After being in business for a month or so, I was very much aware of how much I didn’t know. This is also great, because it opened up doors everywhere. There was opportunities in places that I never even thought to look! And because I had someone who knew where they were (and how to get there…and how to open the door and fit in with the crowd beyond it) my transition through these stages was much smoother than most!

3. Conscious Known

I could finally drive a standard. I just wasn’t very good at it. This is the fine line between knowing you don’t know something…and just starting to try it. At this point all you can do is practice, hope for the best and don’t give up! It takes effort, but you’re also starting to see results (I finally got out of the driveway without stalling, and no longer accidentally spun my tires when shifting to first gear).

In my business, things were starting to take off, but it still took a lot of conscious effort! I spent countless hours screwing up my autoresponders, getting the forms wrong, and straightening out my messes! There were so many times when I would get something “just right.” Then my intuition would start bothering me….”you better recheck that.” So I would, and of course, I’d missed something! (I got really good at listening to my intuition!). It took all of the screws up to grow my understanding. If you want to know the ins and outs of your business, you need to learn to do it yourself at first. You’ll grow as a person, and you’ll really appreciate how much work it is when you can hand it off to someone else!

Ideally you will get to an advanced stage of conscious knowing, at least for the majority of your life. I’m not saying that you need to think through every thing you do, but being present as you do it will create appreciation and gratefulness for the small things in life.

4. Unconscious Known

This is a habit. And this isn’t necessarily the place you want to be in life. I’ll explain in a second, first the analogy.

Now I am at the unconscious know state in driving my car. I shift easily, without jerking or spinning my tires, or even noticing. It feel completely natural. In fact, I can’t remember what the big deal was about learning in the first place. I have this assumption than anyone can do it, and that it is really simple. Not a problem!

There are some things in my business that are at this point…my autoresponder is one of them (at least until I switched software, which I did about 2 months ago and the process started all over again!). Now, you might be thinking that this is the ideal place to be. But it isn’t. Do you really want to go through life, unconscious? Uh uh, you sure don’t.

This is what they’re talking about avoiding when they say, “live in the moment.” Again, it’s not that you need to put a lot of effort into thinking about the process for everything you do. But at least do it, aware that you’re doing it! Sometimes I have a bad habit of driving somewhere, caught up in my thoughts, and I arrive at my destination not really knowing how I got there. That is the kind of unconscious known I want to avoid.

What stage are you in right now? Where do you want to be?

If you are in stage 1 or 2 and want life to get a little easier, the fastest way to get there is to find someone who has gone through and get them to “show you the way!”

Want to use this in your ezine or blog? That’s fine as long as you don’t alter it in any way and add the following bio:

Kimberly Englot is the Authentic-Life Coach, & CEO of Authentic Self Personal Development. Her VIP Coaching and group programs  will teach you to discover your authentic self and be free to change careers, find relationships, lose weight and pursue greatness! Clear away 6 years of “baggage” in 6 weeks with The Master LIFE Cleanse.