I had an interesting unintended experiment this afternoon.

I have a loud burr coffee grinding machine.

I was ready to make some coffee (I drink cold dripped coffee) and ground the coffee beans while I was doing something else.

I found out that I am much better ignoring memes than ignoring loud noises. I could not hear myself thinking. I was making mistakes… I pondered what I was doing…

This gave me an opportunity to put myself in your shoes. What it must be like to be living in the constant jarring noise of the memes…

Here is what I have seen so far:

If you can identify what you are hearing, then you can investigate and see if you need to attend to it.

For example I heard a noise the other day. Had I just simply ignored it, I would have not been able to continue working. So I investigated it.

It was a plumber fixing something on the first floow. Good. Now I know what it is… I can include it now.

I heard a jarring noise from the outside today. It sounded like a lawn mower, but it could have been something dangerous. I investigated, and it was the lawn mower, sitting in a neighbor’s driveway, unattended. I checked, and he was alive, and probably well: he waived to me.

I felt a butterfly-y internal state. I investigated: is it mine? No. Is it my next door neighbor’s? It felt like money worry. I sent some Heaven on Earth energy her way, and returned to work.

I burst out sobbing while I was watching a video. I looked if there was any reason for me to cry. There was nothing in the present. Good, no problem. I cried until I stopped, I mopped my eyes, and continued working. There was nothing I needed to attend to.

Now, if you think that I was born with this ability, I was not. In fact I was frazzled and worried most of my life.

So how do you get to be like me, where I can “label”, or more precisely identify what something is, so I can just “have” them, instead of having to fix them, worry about them, run from them, or take them personally?

Just like most anything, learning to be like this, free and undisturbed, goes through four major phases.

• Unconsciously incompetent… you don’t even know you could be able to tell what is what and be at peace.
• Consciously incompetent… let’s hope that this article takes you there
• Consciously competent… learning curve… lots of work… and even more attention and awareness. This is what is happening in the 67 steps coaching program… my coaching.
• Unconsciously competent… I do this and don’t have to think about it. It is second nature to me.

This is a lot like chess… a chess master doesn’t have to do a lot of thinking that a newbie has to do. The chess master has distinctions, formations, situations stored in his brain that come out, effortlessly.

I am like a chessmaster in quite a few areas of my life.

You are, my guess, a mixed bag. Mostly, judging from the starting point measurements, most of you, in most areas, you are in unconsciously incompetent. You don’t even know you could be able to tell what is what and be at peace, to be powerful, to be well, to be loved.

Instead you are repeating unsuccessful, unworking memes, endlessly, hoping that this time it is going to work.

Good luck with that.

Here is an article, that you might enjoy… and that will support you to go from unconsciously incompetent to consciously incompetent… the starting point for anything worth doing and having.

Read the original article: The art of being well, being unphased, and impervious… for real.