The Confidence in Identifying Your Metaskills

Feb 9, 2016

The Confidence in Knowing Your Metaskills | www.nalumana.com

 

Identifying your “metaskills” can be a game-changer when it comes to recognizing and valuing your own abilities.

 

Too often, we (as in, especially women), are stingy with giving ourselves due credit when we accomplish something great.  We also have a tendency to assume that our success at something won’t necessarily guarantee another success.  We may have run five marathons, and still can’t reign in the confidence to believe we can run a sixth.  

There is great power in taking the time to not only acknowledge and celebrate our accomplishments, but to take that acknowledgement one step further by recognizing the metaskills we have or have developed in the process.

Here’s what a metaskill is:

 

Skill:  You taught yourself how to play guitar

Metaskill:  You are able to summon the resourcefulness and dedication to teach yourself something new.

Get it?  Here’s another one:

 

Skill:   You haul your butt to yoga every morning.  Every. Morning.

Metaskill:  You have the discipline it takes to commit to a practice that is good for your body and soul.

That feels good, eh?  Let’s do one more:

 

Skill:  You put your moody threenager to bed every night without screaming, thrashing, or pulling out your hair.

Metaskill:  You are a miracle-worker.

(I kid.  You are, but you are also a gentle, loving and patient parent).

It follows, then, that you could teach yourself how to make the perfect soufflé, start a meditation practice, or bring your kids grocery shopping.  That you could teach yourself Mandarin, train for a triathlon, or go on a family vacation to Peru.  And so it goes, until you feel like you could do anything.

What if you wrote down ten seemingly everyday things you’ve accomplished this week, or this month, and mustered up your sense of your own awesomeness to identify the metaskills that go along with them?

What if you made a practice of acknowledging how your skills and accomplishments contribute to your overall ability to do anything, with a bit of dedication/elbow grease/love?

 

Your turn:

 

Can you identify a metaskill that you’ve developed?  

What other, new (scary?) things might you be able to accomplish using that skill?

 

The Becoming Podcast has been on a short hiatus while I focus on writing my book, but oh what a comeback episode I have for you!

This month, I spoke to Toko-pa Turner, who many of you may know as the unofficial patron saint of many of my circles and gatherings because of the sheer number of times I’ve quoted from the wisdom of her book, Belonging.

Toko-pa is a Canadian author, teacher, and dreamworker. Blending the mystical teachings of Sufism in which she was raised with a Jungian approach to dreams, she founded The Dream School in 2001, from which thousands of students have graduated. She is the author of the award-winning book, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, which explores the themes of exile and belonging through the lens of dreams, mythology, and nature. This book has resonated for readers worldwide, and has been translated into 10 different languages so far. Her work focuses on the relationship between psyche and nature, and how to follow our inner wisdom to meet with the social, psychological, and ecological challenges of our time.

Here’s some of what Toko-pa and I talk about in this episode:

> The dream that changed Toko-pa’s life, causing her to question her career and, ultimately, her identity

> How we can court our dreams to support us during times of radical transformation – and the reasons so many of us have a hard time remembering and working with what shows up in our dreamscape

> Toko-pa’s perspective on the message of Belonging after the divisiveness our society has experienced in the years since it was published

> What happened for both Toko-pa and I when we fell out of belonging from the ideologies of the “wellness world”

> How to build community when you’re under-resourced

> “The Big Lie” when it comes to belonging, and how we can reclaim a sense of belonging to the greater family of things, as Mary Oliver so famously wrote

Listen to the episode on iTunes

 

Show Notes

Toko-pa’s Website

Belonging:  Remembering Ourselves Home, Toko-pa’s book

The David Abram video about animism mentioned in the interview

Toko-pa’s self-guided program, Dream Drops

Companion, the program that accompanies Belonging

 

Also, while you’re at it, if you enjoy The Becoming Podcast, I would be so grateful if you would rate and review, and even subscribe to it on iTunes.  That goes a long way to helping more and more people find and benefit from hearing these interviews!  Thank you so much!