.

We go through four stages in learning anything:

(1) Stage One is unconscious incompetence. That’s where we don’t know that we don’t know.

Imagine a four-year-old sitting behind the steering wheel of Daddy’s car. He’s watched Daddy drive, so now he yanks the wheel left and right, peers over the dashboard, waves his hand out the window to signal turns. He thinks he’s driving. He doesn’t know that he doesn’t know.

(2) Stage Two is conscious incompetence. That’s where we know that we don’t know.

Imagine this same kid as a teenager. It’s his first day in the Driver Ed car. The instructor tells him to parallel park. A chill runs through his entire body. He knows that he doesn’t know.

(3) Stage Three is conscious competence. That’s where we know that we know.

Flash forward to this same kid six months later. He’s just gotten his driver’s license. He gets behind the wheel, buckles up carefully, and drives down the street with a smile on his face. He knows that he knows.

(4) Stage Four is unconscious competence. That’s where we don’t know that we know.

Flash forward, one last time, to this same kid at forty. He’s been driving for so long that now it barely engages his attention. He tools along the highway talking on his cell phone, fiddling with his radio, and worrying about the fight he just had with his wife. When he has to parallel park, he does it without thinking. He’s reached the stage where he doesn’t know that he knows.

*

What has all this to do with control?

This:

When it comes to control, we’re all addicted.

And we all start off in the same place:

We don’t know we’re addicted. 

We don’t know that we don’t know how not to control.

We control automatically, unconsciously and compulsively. 

And when our controlling causes problems, we don’t see it.  We find other explanations. 

So the first step we face, if we want to recover from this universal addiction, is we must move from Stage One to Stage Two.

We must become aware that, most of the time, we really don’t know how not to be controlling.

That’s where the learning begins.