In my clinical work with my patients, I have seen that many people wish to become competent or experts at different tasks. Generally speaking, there are two groups of people. One group of people repeatedly do the very thing they wish to learn to do well. They try and fail, try and fail, and then try yet again and finally succeed. Another group avoids doing what they want to do well. The group that allows themselves to do the task imperfectly does not need my help. They work at the undertaking and learn by doing it. In time they become competent and sometimes an expert. However, many people will avoid doing the very thing they wish to get good at or excel at even though they profess they badly want to come to do the task very well. One thing I discovered myself saying to my patients is, “Let’s face it. You never will become an expert at something you avoid doing.” After challenging them with this realistic statement, I attempt to help them with their resistance to learning by doing. Keep in mind that the position I am taking applies to many different tasks, skills, and long-term goals. It does not matter what we are talking about doing. If you are going to become an expert at something, you have to do it and stay with it over time. You will get proficient by doing it, not thinking about doing it.
Once I have helped my patient see, and more importantly, accept that doing, not avoiding, is the key to skill development, we begin to work on the rigid and extreme attitudes that are blocking them from doing and practicing what they wish to master. Here are a few examples of the rigid and extreme attitudes that underpin avoidance behavior:
1. I have to perform this task perfectly well from the outset. I refuse to allow myself to do it incompetently and learn to master it by doing it imperfectly.
2. Because others may witness my incompetence at this task, that would be awful. I have to be ashamed if others see me perform incompetently.
3. When I do something imperfectly, the awkward and uncomfortable sensations and feelings I experience are unbearable. I cannot bear feeling this way as I fumble to learn a new task.
4. If I do the task incompetently, that would mean I am lesser than my peers who can perform the task competently at present.
5. Expertise absolutely should take less effort than it does.
To help the patient stop avoiding the task and begin cultivating the skill, we vigorously dispute these very self-defeating attitudes. I use different lines of attack to help the patient free themselves from these self-defeating attitudes that keep them from learning by doing. Let’s look at other ways of challenging these self-limiting attitudes:
Attitude 1: “I have to perform this task perfectly well from the outset. I refuse to allow myself to do it incompetently and learn to master it by doing it imperfectly.”
If you hold this attitude, what is likely to be the result? Expertise or continued avoidance and incompetence at the task or skill? If you do not get on a bicycle, can you learn to ride a bike by watching another person ride a bike? The obvious answer is you will never learn to ride a bike by watching others ride a bicycle. The practical impact of refusing to allow yourself to perform the task incompetently is that you avoid doing the task and dream about mastering the task in the future. Humans learn to do things by doing them. Using the example of learning to ride a bike, sooner or later, you have to get on the bicycle and risk falling if you wish to learn how to ride a bike.
Now let us look at an alternative attitude that will allow a person to do the task, however ineptly that may be at first. That attitude would be something like, “I wish I could perform this desired task from the outset perfectly well, but I do not have to do so. I will accept that continued avoidance does not work in the real world. I will allow myself to do the task repeatedly in an inept way so that in the future, I will be better at this task and ultimately experience the pleasure of mastering the task.”
Attitude 2: “Because others may witness my incompetence at this task, that would be awful. I have to be shameful if others saw me perform incompetently.”
What does awful mean? Awful means something is so problematic that there is no limit to its badness. Could nothing be worse than having others witness you displaying an attempt at this task and doing it incompetently? Is that true? We all like to perform tasks in front of others well, but is it awful when we do not? Is that an accurate evaluation or one that is extreme? Is this not an exaggeration that undermines working at mastering the task? Would it not be better to describe such a public display of incompetence as undesirable but NOT awful? Could you not transcend such a public display of incompetence? Do you have to be ashamed about such an exhibition? Could you not be disappointed and see that shame is a self-defeating choice of emotion in this situation? Perhaps you could hold the attitude that “it is undesirable to perform a task incompetently, but let’s face it, it is far from the end of the world. I can be disappointed that I did this poorly, but I will choose to accept myself unconditionally and shamelessly.” You can make this choice. You can then view your performance as undesirable but far from awful. More importantly, you can choose not to feel shame when you perform poorly. You never need to impress anyone, in an absolute sense, unless you illogically think you do. If you believe you must impress your audience, you will render yourself anxious before the performance and shameful if you perform below your standards.
Attitude 3: “When I do something imperfectly, the awkward and uncomfortable sensations and feelings I experience are unbearable. I cannot bear feeling this way as I fumble to learn a new task.”
Is this true? Were you born walking and talking, or did you stumble and mumble, and did you survive those instances of incompetence? When you first learned to walk and talk, you likely did not hold the attitude that you had to start as an expert and could not bear falling when you walked or mumbling when you were learning to talk? You kept trying, and what happened? Through trial, error, and feedback, you learned how to walk and talk? You survived doing these things incompetently and are here to tell the tale. Were those repeated acts of incompetence unbearable? Of course not. They were frustrating but far from intolerable. If they genuinely were, you would have died as a child. Childhood is a state of incompetence. However, no matter how good we get at different things, we all remain incompetent at other things. It is not that we cannot bear doing something incompetently as adults. The problem comes from our unhealthy, rigid, and extreme attitudes towards our incompetent performance. You think we cannot tolerate an incompetent performance when the facts show we can and we do not absolutely have to do it competently.
Attitude 4: “If I do the task incompetently, that would mean I am lesser than my peers who can perform the task competently at present.”
Although it would be true that you would possess less skill at doing the desired task in comparison to your peers, how would that make you lesser of a person? Yes, you could define yourself that way, but is that valid? Could you not acknowledge your lack of skill but not arbitrarily define yourself as lesser of a person? Perhaps you could hold the attitude, “I have aliveness, and I do that skill relatively poorly, but that proves I am human, a fallible human, who is a mix of skills at all different levels of development. I am in a state of flux and may get better at this skill if I stick with it. Is any single skill or attribute the gold standard for evaluating my human worth? The answer is that there is no ultimate standard of human value. All standards for valuing a human vis-à-vis another human are arbitrary, concluding that human value is unquantifiable. There is no reason why I have to devalue myself just because I am not as good as one of my peers at this particular activity.”
Attitude 5: “Expertise absolutely should take less effort than it does.”
Where is it written that expertise should take less effort than it does? Will this attitude help you develop expertise, or will it stop you from paying the price expertise requires? Is your attitude realistic or idealistic? How would you function if you held the attitude “I wish that expertise required less effort, but it does not have to do so. I will accept that I will have to pay the price required to gain expertise if I want to be an expert at this skill. The price is time practicing as practice makes better!”
The Bottom Line: If you want to be an expert at anything, or even just very good at it, you have to allow yourself to do it incompetently. Accept this as a fact of life. None of us were born skilled at anything beyond getting our caregiver’s attention by crying when we were uncomfortable. If you want to learn something, do it, and do it again. Accept your failure at the task. Accept the awkwardness you may experience as you perform the desired task poorly. It is unfortunate to fail but never the end of the world. Stop defining your human worth in terms of how well you do something. It is worth doing poorly simply because no one ever learned how to do something well by avoiding doing it. Keep reminding yourself it is uncomfortable to do something poorly but not unbearable. You may even enjoy the learning process once you stop demanding that you do it perfectly well from the outset. Remember the words of the artist Pablo Picasso, “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”