Unconscious Incompetence into Conscious Competence

You know the scenario. It’s a new year and you want to make some changes. Maybe you want to lose weight, or make more money, or be more organized. These are all good starting thoughts to help you set some specific goals. Yet, despite your best intentions, these goals may not come to fruition.
Henry Ford said, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” This is because habit is the main ruler of our thoughts and behaviors, and once something becomes a habit, it’s unconscious. To change the default behavior, the default habits take some undoing.
You know how when you repeatedly walk the same way through a field, the grasses flatten out and you create a get a path? A similar thing happens in your brain. Basically, you have to create a new “path” in your brain and let the grasses grow back to cover the old one.

Here’s how. First, decide what habits will help you reach and maintain your goals. Example: you want an organized office. A new habit might be to spend a few minutes putting things away after when you finish a task. You know, filing the paper AND putting the file back in the drawer. You might need to make a sign to remind you, or…you might want to work with a coach.
It takes work to create the new habits needed to change the paths in your brain; once you do, though, you will step from Unconscious Incompetence into Conscious Competence.