The Not So Obvious Connection Between Competence and Goals
Competence is a matter of fact that preparation and experience has provided you with the ability to perform skills successfully. It’s obvious that you must be competent to achieve your goals. What’s not so obvious is that nearly every goal you have from the time you are born initially exceeds your competence.
Just think about the crawl, walk, run pattern. When the goal is to crawl, you can’t yet crawl. When the goal is to walk, you can crawl, but you can’t yet walk, and when the goal is to run you can walk but you can’t yet run.
So, this pattern dictates that at the first stages of any goal pursuit process the real goal is to use what you have to build up what you don’t have. However, as we get older, we forget this. Instead of taking baby steps, we let the learning curve discourage us because we don’t yet have the skills to achieve our goals.
This is what I want you to takeaway as a short reminder today. Goals always precede the process of increasing your abilities and skills. Thus, initially your goals will exceed your competencies. Therefore, as you define goals you must also define the new competencies you need and the current competencies you have that can help you. Then, start the process of developing those competencies by learning and gaining experience. As the saying goes, don’t let what you can’t do stop you from doing what you can do.