Owning Your Process
Overcome The Training Wheel Effect
The path toward mastery of any skill set can be a long one. And, if you’ve ever taken the time to get really good at something, you’ll know that sometimes you pass the threshold into excellence without realizing it, because you still feel like a novice in your own head. You doubt your own mastery.
I call this the “training wheel effect.” If you’ve ever helped a child learn to ride a bike, you’ve probably realized they were ready to take their training wheels off for quite a while before they realized it. Even though they possess all the skills necessary to ride, it takes extra time for them to take ownership of those skills.
I think a lot of people fall victim to the training wheel effect when it comes to learning manifestation, too. So, we’re going to talk a little bit about how to overcome it.
The bad news about the training wheel effect, especially as it pertains to conscious creation, is that it’s entirely psychological. There’s no test you can take that makes you say, “Okay, I passed, so I’m a master now.”
Even further, “mastery” is somewhat ill-defined as a category. There are levels to mastery. It’s like someone who has been training in Karate for eight years getting a black belt versus someone who has been teaching Karate for 48 years. Sure, technically, both practitioners have attained some level of mastery, but that doesn’t mean they’re equals.
In my experience, when people study conscious creation (even for a very long time), they have a tendency to compare themselves to the proverbial tenth-degree black belts of the discipline. They feel like if they can’t materialize gold out of thin air, then they must know nothing and be a complete novice. Or, even if they can manifest great experiences, if they can’t do it 100% of the time they assume there must be something they don’t know or understand that’s holding them back.
Again, the training wheel effect is entirely psychological, which is bad news.
But here’s the good news:
The training wheel effect is entirely psychological.
As frustrating as it is that mastery isn’t an objective state you can test yourself into, it’s also beneficial that you’re able to grow into mastery naturally. And I have a couple of tips that might help you capitalize on these benefits.
Overcoming The Training Wheel Effect
Claim Your Black Belt Early
If you’ve invested a good deal of time and effort into studying and understanding manifestation, it’s probably time to begin thinking of yourself as a master. That’s not to say you should overinflate yourself after reading a few Neville Goddard lectures over a three-month period, but if you’ve really sunk time into reading, listening, and (most importantly of all) thinking about these subjects, then you should trust your own intelligence and recognize that you probably have a solid grasp on the basics.
Understand That “Mastery” Is Just The Ability To Make Distinctions
As I stated before, we all have a tendency to compare ourselves to the best of the best when thinking about “mastery.” That isn’t necessary, though. Mastery is just the point at which you’re able to build your own understanding of a subject and make distinctions between different ideas you hear or read.
I can generally tell who is afraid to take their training wheels off by the types of questions that they ask me. When people think of themselves as novices, they ask a lot of “how” questions. When they’ve claimed ownership of their process, they tend toward “why” questions.
Now, this isn’t a hard rule; even now, having studied all this for a really long time, I still ask myself “how” questions. But as you get more advanced the “hows” you wonder about should become more nuanced. It’s the difference between somebody asking a chef, “How do I cut an onion?” versus “How should I hold my knife.”
The first question only elicits a very discrete answer — by asking it, the best you can hope for is the knowledge of how to cut an onion. The second question, though, can help you make forward progress all over the kitchen. If I learn a safer and more efficient way to hold my knife, I’ll be able to cut anything faster.
Try to move yourself toward questions like the second one. Try to avoid questions along the lines of “How do I do this one very specific thing?” and toward questions like “How do I gain control of this overarching principle that allows me to do a lot of different things.” Or, even better, ask questions like “Why is strategy A better than strategy B? Is it actually better at all? Is it a rule that it’s better, or might strategy A be better for you, but strategy B be better for me? Is it possible to combine strategies A and B together so that I can reap the rewards from both of them? etc.”
Answer Your Own Questions
If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. All those “good” questions I listed above are questions that you can answer on your own with a little (or maybe a lot of) thought. When you’re a master who has the ability to make distinctions, all other masters become nothing more than consultants.
I’ve never met a single one of the many people who I’ve learned from on my own personal path. Most of them are long dead, and I couldn’t ask them clarifying questions even if I wanted to. Others are just too inaccessible.
This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there have been many times when it would’ve been great to get a very specific question answered by someone I knew could guide me in the right direction. On the flip side, though, not having access to my teachers forced me to be 100% self-reliant in my studies. If there was something that didn’t make sense to me, or that I couldn’t quite put into action, the only solution was to sit and think about it for as long as necessary.
When you don’t have any lifelines, you quickly learn to only trust information you actually understand personally. There just isn’t any other way. Learning becomes a puzzle — the pieces are all out there in various books/lectures/teachings/etc., but it’s your job to both gather the pieces and to put them together.
As much as possible, try and buy into this process.
Avoid Highs and Lows
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve said, “I finally understand everything now,” I’d be able to buy the entire world ten times over. Big insights are awesome, but it’s best to avoid thinking of them as final insights.
This kind of thinking puts you on a roller coaster of highs and lows where you either understand absolutely everything or nothing at all. Sometimes, I go on the Neville Goddard subreddit and see people posting rants about how nothing works, and how they’re finished with manifestation because it’s BS; then, I click on their profile and see that a week earlier, they were posting about how they’d finally figured everything out and were an absolute expert in manifestation.
Like I said, I’ve been here a million times, and I know it’s hard to avoid. But try your best to.
Try and take ownership of your process. It might feel scary at first, but it’ll speed up your progress.
As always, good luck.