Let's go to the launch site near the Hood River sandbar where everybody is windsurfing, kite-foiling, kiteboarding, wing-surfing... it's a place where we spread our toys out and collaborate on the learning experience commiserating with each other's crashes but ultimately learning by mimicking. There's lots of learning going on because we're all willing to fail often, fail forward. We get up and try again. All of these things that we do on the water are very similar to your journey of self-awareness.

It starts with being unconsciously incompetent - that is - you're not even aware of how bad you are. The very first thing you do is move on to becoming consciously incompetent - that is - you now know how strong the wind is, how bad the conditions are for your skills and all the things you need to learn by practice. So you move to the third stage which is becoming consciously competent - that is - you're practicing things that you're learning like the tools from Volume One. Ultimately you'll become unconsciously competent  - you'll be able to just jump on, get up, and go where you want to go. You'll be in control.

Learning starts as (1) unconsciously incompetent, becoming (2) consciously incompetent, moving on to (3) consciously competent, and then finally (4) unconsciously competent. That's why we practice and crash.

Discuss The Process

Daniel: "You went from windsurfing to wind foiling and I would bet that you experienced going from stage one to stage two which is to go from unconsciously incompetent to becoming consciously incompetent. I feel for you because that's the most awkward time.

Garth: "Yeah and my shin is proof! Even though Daniel explained to me to stay away from the foil I managed to kick it good and hard with both of my legs probably a dozen times or better and so unconsciously to consciously.

Remember? The burden of proof is on the claimant not on the recipient! Two years ago I shot an episode about dataism and global challenges like pandemics and that we better be aware and be prepared. Here's my evidence on iterations on practicing, on doing things again and again and again until they become second nature. They become unconsciously competent.

Reading from Yuval Harari; "For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little. More people die from old age than from infectious diseases and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers terrorists and criminals combined. Up till now increasing human power relied mainly upon upgrading our external tools. In the future, it may rely more on upgrading the human body and mind or on merging directly with our tools. This is why it's so vital to think about humanity's new agenda. Precisely because we have some choice regarding the use of new technologies. We had better understand what is happening and make up our minds about it before it makes up our minds for us."

You've heard the saying that "the devil is in the details". The process subtleties are the thing you have to capture. Our habits are perfected over time. We're not aware of them. Awareness leaves you in a confounded state because it can point out to you what you're not doing right but unless someone tells you what to do correctly you can't fix it. You can be stalled and stuck and it can feel horrible. It can end in divorce. It can be bankruptcy. It can be if you stay there stuck, fixated in a place. Be sure that when you gain awareness of an issue that you seek out the remedy. You must seek out the new habit to create.

I'm saying through mimicking you can get out of SCOTOMAVILLE by following someone who's been there. You can leave by asking questions of those that have already gone into self-awareness and self-understanding and ultimately actualization.

Angelina: "In my first lesson or journey on how to windsurf there were several things that played in the process - from having the right equipment to the order in which the equipment is put together and you know Daniel had me holding the sail and practicing with the sail on the land so I can get used to how to hold it and the wind's resistance and where my hand positioning needed to be and my feet.

Then carrying that gear down to the water. Putting it in the water with the waves so we had to wait a little while because the wind had picked up and so then once I'm in the water now I'm having to learn how to climb onto the board, get to my feet, and balance, uphaul and then once again what I practiced on land beforehand positioning my hands on the boom so that I could stand up and balance.

For me, it was looking at all these little bitty things. You know: "I don't know what I don't know" but following his lead someone who's been there for a long time and has done this work for a long time being grateful for what I was able to achieve and um being okay with there's so much more to go. It's going to take time and practice and consistency in honing my techniques while remembering the process along the way."

Let me slow the pace of this episode to help you absorb the significance of what I'm about to demonstrate. You see I've been working on this episode with now 400 video clips. That's four times the normal number of videos for an episode. It's been five going on six weeks for this one episode and it's because I have had to sleuth out the real message (detective sherlock holmes - to sleuth). I have had to find my scotoma with my production pace. My expectation was one episode a week because that's what I did Volume One with - nay nay it's been five weeks it's 400 video clips and I've struggled emotionally with what I felt was falling behind because I expected things to continue as they have been. That was a habit. That was a rule I unconsciously had set. I want to slow this down slightly for you to absorb the significance of what I'm about to demonstrate - my process to discover my blind spots.

Your Personal Everest is filled with discoveries of scotomas. You shouldn't settle for an easy answer.

Here's an example of the process I'm going through. I'm watching Sam Ross with an excellent series of instructions on foil jibing. I'm attempting to find my scotoma so that I can find a real solution to why I can't gracefully finish a jibe.

Sam Ross: "if you want to fully foil out of a jibe there's a couple of key things to understand about the feet to make it happen. First is when the back foot comes out it comes into the middle of the board and that helps you set your height. You want to come in fairly low. The next is the most important. My back foot then works all the way across before I go into the jibe and right back by the back foot strap. It goes all the way back because it helps me keep the lift on and also by having the feet a little bit wider in the middle of the jibe it's easy to shift your weight forward if you want less lift or shift your weight back if you want more lift."

Just to show you unconsciously incompetent I had intended and had waited most of the day to set up and shoot a drone shot of my fancy footwork from the air but I forgot to bring the cable to connect my cell phone to the controller to be able to fly the drone. The cable is sitting on my desk. Now I'm consciously incompetent.

There's a perfect example of leaving something in the last place you put it and unconsciously incompetent of it.

Now I know to watch out for this and have a new discipline to put this where I think it belongs in the box with the rest of the drone.

What I want you to catch is that it's very simple, and human, to accept a partial (or incorrect) answer without having the solution. Solutions are really hard to find because you have to dig deep to find out what the scotoma is so that that blind spot can be corrected - so that you don't just set up another rule which leads to division. Solutions are found on the other side of a scotoma.

Carson Miller has a nice little hint which unravels my rule of keeping track of the cable for the controller.

Carson: "plug that into the side here make sure this is open a little bit because what you're going to do is you're going to tuck this cable down just to put it there and now it should fit into this space so when you fold it up you don't have to worry about taking that cable out you just leave it in permanently which is fantastic and I love this about the controller because it's all hidden away when you want to put the controller away"

You gotta be kidding me! It's that easy? Now I don't have to have it lost all the time?

About all that fancy footwork that I've been practicing? I've been practicing it wrong as it turns out. I simply need to take a bunch of small steps to get to that position, not a large leap

Daniel: "This is Alex. Alex tell me how long you've been riding."

Alex: "It goes back to 1978 that started in France with the Windsurfer One design and teak booms and a 6.3 sail - so that's 42 years ago I think."

Daniel: "Tell us about what we're watching... you went from right here at the launch site to Stevenson and back to Mosier. What in the world!

Alex: "It's a little sightseeing trip in the Gorge - it's perfect."

Daniel: "You made 145 jibes!

Alex: "You counted?"

Daniel: "I think so yeah. How long did it take you practicing to be able to get your jibes down on a foil?"

Alex: "I did my first foiling jibe the third time I went out on the hydrofoil."

Daniel: "This is what we call unconsciously competent. Natural at it. What do you say for those of us that are constantly crashing and wanting to give up because we don't think we have what it takes?"

Alex: "What do they say? The victory begins where the perseverance of others wanes... it's the domain of experts in pretty much any field A Master Chess player can look at a chessboard and within a few seconds knows exactly what move to make. They recognize the scene and know where to go. They can play against eight players around the table. Don't quit. Keep trying. Never give up.

Daniel: "Yesterday I had the privilege of you riding behind me - sort of spotting me a little. What are your comments about my riding after three years of working on my jibes?"

Alex: It seemed to me like you you had it down on reaches. You flew a stable flight. You had a few difficulties with the jibes, but I think the equipment that you were on is holding you back in your progress. Gear has evolved a lot in the last two years. Wings have become a lot more stable. We know what works for board shapes and when you have good equipment you can progress more quickly."

You'll remember one of the skills of self-awareness from Volume One is listening. I took Alex's suggestion and rode a larger foil as a demo. I discovered that I do have the skillset for jibing - I just lack proper updated tools. Hint, hint, the tools from Volume One? Pick some of those. Practice with them. Try them out. They'll do you good.

Here's another one of those jumping to a conclusion with a 20-watt brain by setting up a new discipline which is based on a rule which is nothing more than a cover-up for a scotoma that I didn't want to dig deep enough for because I just wanted to get it over with. See? There's a series of habits we have to undo in any good scotoma.

I have a key fob and a key-less ignition in this truck. When I lock the doors if the fob is in the truck then anyone can walk up and just unlock the doors. I can't go on the water with the fob because it's electronic - meaning I can't put it in my wetsuit. I don't want to leave it in a bag on the beach. I've been sticking it in the bed of the truck near the tailgate. It lets the doors lock but I can't get the tailgate locked. That 'habit' has been my patch. That's been my half-wrong answer. I've asked several other people how they solved it. Nope. That's the way it is they share.

I finally dug around trying to solve the issue with a real solution. I needed to find my scotoma. Ford solved it for me long ago. You just press the last two buttons of the door keypad at the same time and bingo the whole truck is locked with your key inside. Yeah - a solution. I had to make an extra effort. I had to sleuth it out. I'm saying that's the hard work. The easy stuff is taking an answer that somebody gives you. The hard work is finding out where your scotoma is. You might think no one has solved it before, or that you just want to be lazy and accept a simple answer, Nay nay.

For the record; I just left this $125 windsurfing item on the grass yesterday. Today I could not find it in my gearboxes anywhere. For the first 15 minutes as I dug through all of my gear, I was being disappointed at myself for having left it. Then lo and behold somebody had left it on a picnic table for me to recover today. No one walked off with it. That is amazing. Usually, the gear just walks off down the road. I left it on the beach yesterday and it's still here. Now I'm encouraged that somebody else considered my situation and left it for me. Thank you. I'll do likewise and finish this episode so you can find your missing items!