One of the most important experiences a person needs for a satisfying, successful, healthy life.

A sense of: “I can do this.”

More importantly: “I can learn this.”

Competence is an encouraging (quite possibly positively addictive) experience of success, that inspires further stretching of skills. Then those, along with the inherent extra learning strategies too, can be add to the list of a person’s long list of competencies.

The most important competence experience is the repeatable ability to learn new skills. This is mostly achieved by grappling with physical, emotional & mental learning processes, mostly alone.

To illustrate, you’ve heard the phrase: “You can lead a horse to water. You can’t make them drink.” The drinking process MUST be entirely facilitated by the horse. Otherwise it’s just force-feeding, and nothing truly good ever came of that.

It’s the same with humans learning and completing tasks. And the downward spiral begins, though is not limited to, young childhood.

Young humans are wired to struggle with tasks and keep going (ever watched a child teach themselves to walk?!) They’ll find unique and more or less efficient and effective ways to drink the water without even needing to be led to the ideal watering holes. No forcing and usually only minimal (if any) support and encouragement required.

This innate ability to LEARN competence flows strongly … until children take on, as their own, the limiting, meaning-making and negative mindsets of people around them. These bystanders externalise their fears, due to their own inability to handle the discomfort of watching someone else’s uncomfortable learning stages. They dive in to help because they do not like how they feel, and desperately want the struggling person to be able to do the task. In doing so they deprive the learner of the struggle AND the sense of competence.

·     Free to demonstrate what you can do in the ways that are right for you

·     Allowed to learn from your mistakes without judgement or others’ fears interfering

·     Supported to learn from your mistakes with space, time and maybe small nudges on request

·     Confident in your current capability and your potential to learn more

·     Appreciative of the long game, rather than knocked off the learning course at first stumble or seemingly insurmountable obstacle

·     Feeling satisfied with your progress or the outcomes you’re creating

Let’s play this out with a wee scenario:

Consider Anna who is trying to do something she hasn’t done before very successfully. She’s working on new skills to achieve this task. She’s finding it difficult to complete to her satisfaction. Anna is needing to dig deep into herself, problem solve, try out different mindsets about keeping going and doing things differently, despite the many mistakes she’s making.

Anna is learning who she is now in relation to what she’s trying to achieve and how she’s transforming herself to achieve it.