Learn, do and then be

In learning any skill, especially the skill of living a life based on loving your journey and living in the moment, there’s a three-step process to get to mastery. First you learn what you need to learn, which might be accomplished by reading the right books about the skill you aim to master. Then you need to allow the learning to settle in and integrate within your life. This happens by experiencing what you’ve learned in the laboratory of your days. That’s the ‘do’ part of the formula. Once that happens, and it might take a long time, you’ll eventually get to the ‘being’ part of your life. That’s where the masters live. They don’t try to live, they just live. And they don’t try to be fully present, they just are.

There are four stages that one must pass through in moving form living like a beginner to living like a master. The first is unconscious incompetence. Sadly this is where most people spend their lives. In this introductory stage we don’t know what we don’t know. We’re essentially unconscious- we’re asleep to who we truly are and what our lives could become. But once we open our eyes and wake up by taking some responsibility for our lives and the creation of our destinies, we rise to the second stage, which is conscious incompetence. Here, we develop a sense of awareness about what we don’t know.

“In other words, we become conscious of our incompetence in the way we run our lives. Once here, if we stay conscious and keep doing the inside work to open up, we’ll get to the next stage: conscious competence. This place is characterized by wonderful results starting to appear in life. We’re consciously creating an extraordinary existence. The only problem is that we’re still trying. There’s still struggle.”

We are consciously competent in the way we conduct our life. That’s the good place to be, but not a truly great place to live. We all should aspire to get to the final highest stage – unconscious competence. This stage in life is the stage of mastery. And it’s not about learning any longer or doing anymore – It’s simply of being.

Learn, do and then be – that’s the master’s path

~ From the snatches of "The saint the surfer and the CEO"