Competence:
Earn Your Confidence with Reps
If you are just joining us, this is the sixth in an 8-post series on the 7-C framework. You can catch up here:
By now you’ve set your direction (Clarity), made a binding contract (Commitment), and learned to step into discomfort on purpose (Courage). You’ve shown up brick by brick (Consistency).
Now we enter the fifth “C”: Competence—the stage where skill sharpens, confidence builds, and your actions begin to match your ambition.
Competence isn’t talent. It’s not gifted. It’s not downloaded.
Competence is earned. Earned through reps and honest feedback that stings just enough to create adaptation.
To understand competence, picture one of the first major skills most of us ever learned: driving a car.
Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence
You don’t know how bad you are.
Remember being a kid watching adults drive? You thought it looked easy. Just sit in the seat and turn the wheel. No idea how much was happening under the hood—or behind the eyes.
That’s unconscious incompetence: you don’t know what you don’t know.
Most people live their entire lives in this stage in certain areas—fitness, communication, leadership, time management. They think they’re “fine.” Meanwhile, the car is bouncing off guardrails.
Walking Point demands we recognize this stage early and aggressively. It’s humbling, but humility opens the door to mastery.
Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence
You know you can’t drive the damn car.
You get behind the wheel for the first time, and suddenly everything is a threat. The mirrors, the pedals, the lane markings, your instructor yelling “Stop! Stop! STOP!”
This stage hurts because awareness arrives—and with it, discomfort.
But this is also where transformation begins. You see the gap clearly. You know you need reps. You recognize that competence isn’t optional if you want the freedom that comes with capability.
Stage 3: Conscious Competence
You can drive—if you focus.
Now you’re driving, but every move requires deliberate thought. Hands at 10 and 2. Check this mirror. Then that mirror. Brake gently. Turn signal. Don’t overcorrect.
It works, but it’s not smooth yet. It’s not automatic. Everything is effortful.
This is where most people quit their personal development journey.
Not because they fail, but because they succeed, and it still feels hard.
Keep going. Competence is being born.
Stage 4: Unconscious Competence
You arrive at your destination and barely remember the turns.
This is mastery. Muscle memory. Efficiency without effort.
You don’t think about driving anymore; you just drive.
In life, this is where confidence comes from. Not hype, not bravado, but proof repeated so often that execution becomes instinct.
This is the stage where you reclaim bandwidth, where your skills free you instead of taxing you. Where you become someone who can take on more, lead more, and build more, all without burning out.
Execution (Build Your Competence Loop)
Identify Your Current Stage: For each Line of Effort (Body, Mind, Spirit, Purpose, Relationships, & Responsibilities), identify which of the four stages you’re actually in.
Conscious Training Plan: Pick one area and commit to 20 focused minutes a day. Conscious Competence requires deliberate reps, not half-attention effort.
Hire or Borrow Eyes: Coaches, mentors, peers. Competence grows faster with outside feedback.
Run a Weekly AAR: What improved? Where did you wobble? What’s next?
Automate the Fundamentals: Once something becomes automatic, stack a slightly harder skill on top.
Competence isn’t glamorous. It’s earned in the trenches of repetition and reflection.
But once you have it, once execution becomes instinct, you become someone who is not only moving, but moving well.
Competence unlocks Confidence.
Confidence fuels Curiosity.
And together, they keep you Walking Point.
Until next week,
Thank you for reading. Please share this with a friend who needs it.
John
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Clearly going to be an outstanding book. Love the example of the stages of competence with driving.
I agree with Kyle. It’s going to be a great book. I’m mulling over competence. Seems to me competence is a journey. It’s not that you’ve reached a level of skill and you can rest. Today’s competence is tomorrow’s adequacy and soon after, you’ve had your ass handed to you. I’m thinking sports and combat as examples. Your adversaries are improving and you need to improve faster than they do, otherwise you lose the game, or your life.