Stage 1: Unconscious incompetence
You are not even aware that you are not (yet) competent in a certain area. A pleasant state.

Stage 2: Conscious incompetence
You become aware of the existence and relevance of the skill, recognize that you are not yet sufficiently competent in a certain area and decide to close the gap – for example by additional training, thus reaching the next stage.

Stage 3: Conscious competence
You succeed in reliably performing your newly acquired skill, but you have to think about it and do it consciously, which may still involve a certain amount of effort.

Stage 4: Unconscious competence
The new skill has become second nature and you implement it automatically. The change in your behavior appears increasingly casual and natural.

Stage 5: Conscious unconscious competence
You become aware of your automated behavior patterns and are able to reflect retrospectively in which situations you have acted intuitively and with more consideration than some time ago.

Change is pain

Such personal development is likely to require certain amounts of willpower, effort, and stamina. As a rule, you will not complete this learning process by comfortably reclining on your couch. Most certainly you will have to leave your comfort zone – the one where you know your way around and feel safe – over and over again. Just outside this comfort zone lies your expansion zone that allows you to make new experiences and to learn from them. This area may well develop into an exciting but still controllable training field for you.

Successfully anchoring changes in behavior works similarly to reaching a new stage of fitness in sports: Consistent training designed to develop existing potential means effort and can sometimes even be painful. The principle of “change is pain” is one of the foundations for change for your brain. Pain in the form of physiological exertion causes a transformation of networks in the brain. And this is exactly why it is so important for you to always take the step out of the comfort zone and into the expansion zone. Ideally, you will face the challenges courageously and meet the associated slight discomfort in a positive way. The more often you go out into your expansion zone and face new experiences, the greater your comfort zone will become over time: situations that were previously uncomfortable are becoming less threatening with increased familiarity. If, for example, you find it difficult to speak in front of many people, you will gain security the more often you face the supposedly threatening situation. Presentations will gradually become a routine task for you and thus a component of your new, extended comfort zone.

It is important not to maneuver into the “panic zone,” however – the area for which you may lack the skills, knowledge, and perhaps also the potential to take a step forward. If you consider speaking in front of more than 10,000 people in a stadium about a topic of which you have little knowledge, you will probably run the risk of overextending yourself with such a step – and failing in the task. As a consequence, you will withdraw discouraged and hardly dare to leave your comfort zone in this topic from now on.

Establishing new habits

For new thought and behavior patterns, i.e., new habits, to form, new neuronal paths must be established in the brain. The area in our brain that is responsible for routine activities that do not require a lot of mental attention increasingly has to adopt the new behavior. If a behavior or activity is repeated often enough, at some point such a neuronal path is formed and ensures that our reactions to certain situations are automatic and unconscious – and therefore require less energy. This works very similarly when driving a car, for example. After several years of driving experience, we are able to think about complex topics during driving while – to a large extent unconsciously – operating the car correctly. This requires time, frequent repetition, discipline, and above all patience, however, because on average it takes 60 - 70 days for the corresponding new connections to form in the brain and a new habit to develop after consistent application of new behaviors.

Research has shown that our behavior consists largely of habits and automatic, unconscious reactions to our environment. Only a small part is influenced by our conscious will. It is therefore important for sustainable change to take the step from willpower to new habits and behavioral patterns. Because the less you have to think about something, the more energy and resources you have for other things, such as facing the next challenge and to further improve your interactions. Focus on your goals and new intentions rather than on the supposed weaknesses and habits you want to get rid of. Consider this quote as an inspiration: “The secret of change is to put all your energy not into fighting the old, but into building the new.”