37 - Competence- the experience of the very ground following your moves.

Join the LLC Jewellery Family 

https://relaxed-concha-2004a0.netlify.app/

Come say hi on Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/lorenlewiscolejewellery/?hl=en

Competence, one of the most deeply fulfilling experiences a person can have. But how do we develop genuine competence, and how can we sustain our hearts on its nectar?

Many people are well paid and competent for things they don't actually care about. Competence is its own reward, and forms the platform to spring into excellence, once that language has become familiar enough not to have to think, it's become muscle memory.

 I cancelled a trip to Malta 36 hours before flying out — a women's wrestling camp I'd paid for and was excited about — because some deeper part of me knew I needed a staycation instead. That choice opened up a few days of real flow, and in that space I noticed three experiences that all shared the same quality: real competence, where you can take the material — or the person, or your own body — wherever you want to go.

First, I finally sat down and carved a tiny gold goat in wax, something I'd been afraid to start because it mattered so much to me. After two hours in flow, I got the wax to say exactly what I meant, and it undid me a bit — that's what competence built from years of failing in this craft feels like.

Second, a jiu-jitsu sparring class two years into training, where for the first time it felt less like survival and more like a conversation — I could read an attack, turn it into a defense, and have it flip back into an attack, over and over, with total flow.

Third, a conversation with a client in London that went everywhere — astrology, craniosacral therapy, anthroposophy, jiu-jitsu — and neither of us dropped the thread. We led each other in turns, and it felt like travelling.

All three reminded me that competence isn't about avoiding mistakes — it's what's left after you've made enough of them that you can finally lead, or be led, without losing your footing. That's the whole idea behind the episode title: the feeling of the ground moving with your feet.

How to find your own zone of competence- Look for an area you're already skilled in and ask how you could go deeper, rather than spreading thin across everything you're not yet good at. Competence requires real interest — you can't force your way into excellence in something you don't care about.

Competence is the feeling of the ground moving with your feet — full presence, in the body, reading the room of your materials (paint, weather, a face, a partner's tension) and being met there. Find the practice you're already rooted in, and let that be where you access flow.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello, good morning. Well, it's morning for me. So I'm really enjoying using AI to stitch together some audio files for this podcast. Obviously, I still don't have a jingle or a jangle or a song, but the whole thing is a song, and if a song comes to me spontaneously and I absolutely have to put down an intro, then I'll do that. But for now, I feel like I'm quite explicit in the podcast bump about what this is about, and the right people are gonna have the self-awareness to make the decision straight away if this is goddamn what they want, and if it's not, they'll go elsewhere. So, until further notice, she ain't got a jingle. But what I'm really enjoying doing here is using Clawed, which is an AI piece of software, which is called it essentially does tasks for you, and I'm just uploading screen recordings and audio files and it's stitching them together to form my podcast. Now, if I sat on garage band and got all these extra bits of software and spent two hours doing that, I would not have the vitality to write the things I write that move you. I would not have the energy to do this, and I think there's a real misunderstanding at the moment. I'm just gonna talk about this for a couple of minutes, then I'm gonna stop talking about it. I think there's a real misunderstanding at the moment with creatives and heart-centered, very sensitive, healing-y types about AI. I will never use AI to write my posts. Like I you you can tell if you're if you're following me on Instagram every now and then I hit I hit with a heavy one and it lands every now and then. Sometimes I don't, sometimes I do. That shit comes from the condensed intensity of our internal experience. You can't AI can't do that. Believe me, I've tried, like, not because I wanted it to do the work for me, but because I wanted to see what it would do, and it's just not the same. However, what AI is amazing at is doing all the bullshit stuff that you were never supposed to do anyway, and honestly, even the other day, I wanted to put a podcast tab on my website in the main menu, right? So it's shop about something else, and then podcast. And I have tried to do this before and sat for two hours going through Shopify rabbit holes, looking at widgets, all this stuff. No, I it gives it it makes me not want to live doing all that. So I'm just saying because I sat yesterday with a dear old friend of mine in my studio, and we sat for four hours, and I I init I showed her how to get onto Claude, and I just was a calm presence because I have had this before, and I've been that for myself before. When you're going when you're a passionate woman and you're trying to navigate the world of tech, what you really just need is a calm presence, either find it in yourself or get someone else to just sit there with you. And when it says for the eight bajillionth time, you need to authenticate your email, and you're like, what? And you're you're literally going from one email address on one server to another email address on another server, getting all these codes, and it is seriously triggering when you're someone who's passionate and moves at the speed of light. But if you get over that hurdle of just setting a up with your things, then it can start to do some of the menial tasks for you. And if there is more soulful, engaged, human-centered work that you're doing, there's more time for that. So that's why I'm able to do this this morning on a Friday morning where I have lots of things to do. That's why I am able to prioritize this because I'm starting to get AI to do some of the menial shit for me. I think the confusion comes because people, and I fit I thought this, I thought that AI was gonna be writing people's posts, and I know some people use AI to write all their content, and maybe for some industries that works, but like for the for those of us that want to drink moon juice, you know, and howl at the moon, I don't think it's gonna land somehow. Anyway, this is just a little sign because it was so beautiful sitting there with my friend and helping her do that, and it really felt like, yeah, this is gonna be great for her. So, this episode is a bit of a kind of exclab exclamation. I'm sorry, I am tired today. I had like a 14-hour day in the studio yesterday. I'm tired and happy. This episode is an exploration of the experience from my experience of competence, and I think competence is such a beautiful thing. I know it sounds so unsexy. Competence, but it's such a beautiful thing, and it's funny because I had this, I recorded this a week before I'm releasing it, and in that time I've had so many kind of random, beautiful voice exchanges with people on Instagram um talking about this place before competence, talking about the unknown before learning. So it goes unknown, learning, competence, expertise, genius kind of thing. So, and they weave in and out, but but there is a vague linearity that I think is helpful to respect. So unknown. What am I gonna do? I want to express myself. I don't know, I don't know where, I don't know what modality. Hmm learning, curiosity, being a new, new person experiencing holding a cello for the first time at 54. Hmm, this is a new experience. Learning the somatics of feeling, you know, the notes and the cadence of the sound and the string in my chest. Hmm, this is new. Competence gradually develops over time. When we have competence, we can start to jam with others, and that's what this episode is about. But I'm gonna start it with this beautiful audio recording. Honestly, your audio messages to me, and this person wrote to me a very beautiful message, and then I just replied with an audio, and so she saw that as the invitation to then reply with an audio. She didn't come in with an audio, very respectful and everything, and um, it's the same, it's the same with the last voice note I I shared. Someone will come to me with such a beautiful message, and I'll just say thank you so much. Like, this is so gorgeous to hear, and just exchange something back, and then we might have an exchange sometimes, and it's just so beautiful. And for anyone who's sort of negative about the internet, I just think I think it does such a disservice to those of us who have ever felt alone. People I hear who talk about how negative the internet is often have a hundred friends around them on their road in their postcode. But for it's not it's not like that for everyone. Some of us feel lost with the people around us, some of us don't fit in with the culture around us, and for those people, the internet can be such a say uh such a place of being seen. Yes, you can't only have internet friends, but internet friends become real friends, you know. And the in I just I think it's magic. I think it's magical that I'm recording this into my phone right now and that it's gonna land in the heart of somebody who might need it and who might benefit something from it. I think it's magical that I'm sitting in my shorts in the garden about to lift some weights with a face mask on. I think it's magical that you can tell me what's in your heart through a voice note and I can somehow have my day improved by the energy of that connection. I think it's magical. And why aren't we praising it? Because if this is how we're using tech for good, then it's being used for good. And the fact that there are people who are using it in an extractive way to harvest our attention and take us out of our centre, yes, that is there too, but everything has a dark and a light, and I just think that there are so many people who talk about you know how tech is like all internet is bad, all tech is bad, and it's just such a it's such a strange perspective of reality. But when I hear from those people, it is often the people who who are blessed because what they're interested in is mirrored to them in the world around them. What what if you're what if you have really niche interest and you feel really unseen by the people around you and you get depressed, and you find the internet and you find that there are all these other people who speak about the same challenges and the same amazing things that they honour and that they love, and you suddenly feel like you can keep going. And that's the power of what we're doing here, and that's the power of speaking from our heart, and that's the power of really being vulnerable, not in like faux vulnerability. I don't mean vulnerability of like I'm going through a hard time all the time. Performative vulnerability, no, I mean the vulnerability to actually share something you really care about, that's more vulnerable than sharing something that's really hard. The vulnerability to share something that you've worked so hard for and you don't know what the audience um reception will be like. I think it's magical, and I think we should just remember that we're magical beings and that we have these magical boxes in our hands. And yes, we need our morning boundaries and we need our discipline, and we do need to we do need to understand that it's very addictive. But why is it addictive? It's because what we genuinely deeply need and require is connection, and so make sure that connection is to something life-giving and soulful and not to something draining. Make sure you're not make sure you're not being shown constant body images, ideals because you're a woman of a certain age. Make sure you're not being shown constant idea like images of people who have been born into incredible wealth and you're just building your life. Like make sure you don't surround yourself with images of things that are just so deeply disheartening to where you are. Make sure you surround yourself if you are on the algorithm of any kind, which you probably are, apart from my mum's not really. Make sure you surround yourself really uplifting talismans of what's possible for you in your life, and that blends in nicely to this beautiful voice message from this dear woman, which I'll now play.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

I'm just gonna reply really quickly, even though it's the middle of the night here, um, we're having this gorgeous moon, this full moon, and I live in a forest. I'm in California, and it's just lit up, and I can't sleep, and I keep trying to meditate. Um, and I put on this meditation about pulling out my own creativity. Um, and I do I just want to clarify that I I with the consumerism comment that like your work is worth every penny and more. I just meant that like what's driving me to love it, my drive isn't the consumerism aspect. There's something about it that's lighting up my creativity. I keep getting these messages from various places that I need to bring more joy in my life and get in touch with my creativity. And um, I do come from a background that is entirely intellectual and left it a few years ago. Um and my mother was an artist, um, and I'm really struggling to find my place in expressing my creativity. Um, you mentioned academia. I I was a neuropsychiatrist for more than 20 years practicing medicine, and I walked away a few years ago, and I've just been diving into spirituality and um have been so drawn to creatives, and so this account that I have on Instagram is not my professional account, um, but it's just where I like follow, you know, there's jewelry designers and artists and painters and all sorts of people, and so I did just want to encourage you that, and I will, I'm sure, end up buying a piece from you, and it's not a complaint that it's expensive or anything. I mean, trust me, I live in California. Um, and if you knew what I charged uh outside of insurance, then um, you know, I mean, I you're undercharging, if anything. But um I I just my whole point, and I'm sorry I'm rambling, it's the full moon, it's I'm exhausted and can't sleep because the forest is lit up. Um it is so inspiring. Um, and to feel so inspired and at the same time stuck. Um, my creativity has always been in interior design. And because I left medicine, I no longer have the funds for interior design, um, and I'm starting a new business. But it's like, what how can I do this? You know, is it music, is it movement, is it dance, is it, you know, how do I find the right community? I'm going to storytelling nights in my small town and trying to surround myself with that. So anyway, all that to say that there's an energy that you carry, that your work carries, that is feels ancient to me and feels makes me feel, gives me the feeling that creativity is a birthright, that we all have it, um, and we all express it differently. So while you say your work may not resonate with everyone, um, here it is resonating with someone on the other side of the world who's stuck in her own creativity, frustratingly meditating, trying to connect to her higher self and figure out how to express that creativity um in my own unique way. And so, anyway, have a blessed day and um yeah, thanks for your kind response.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Hello, I'm sitting in my car and I have a million kind of hustly bustly things to do, including post offices and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. But before the practical 3D hustle and bustle of the day begins and a few hours at the bench, I want to share some really beautiful experiences I've happened recently that have been in the zone of high level of competence from the two people that were engaged in them. And I want to share these three experiences with you across different modalities because these three things have got me really thinking about competence and the pleasure of moving in an environment where wherever you want to go, you are followed by the other person. Wherever they want to take you, you follow them. So the first time this happened in the last few days, I've had a bit of a holiday on my own, actually, a bit of a staycation, I think we call it, don't we? Where I cancelled going on a trip to Malta with some girlfriends that I was so so excited about, and I'd paid money for it, and you know, the flight had been booked. And then about 36 hours before the flight was set to go, I just said, Girls, I I can't do it. And they all they're I mean, they're they're in their twenties and they're professionals and they work really hard there. Like two of them are engineers, one of them's doing a PhD in neuroscience, so they're they really get it, they really get how hard work can be and how you need to look after yourself, and you know, but it was hard to call it because I really wanted nothing more than wrestling and learning from it was like a women's only camp, so it was really about encouraging women to train in the sport, and women were flying over from all over Europe, and I was really looking forward to it. And I called it some more ancient part of me knew what I needed, and I had the most wonderful, I'm having the most wonderful kind of staycation where I'm doing loads of work, I'm working from home, the studio's been too hot, and it's just been really enjoyable to get on top of the things that I have felt I haven't had time to do. Um, and also do jujitsu and be in the garden and sing and drink my tea and so many things, but all the high level of productivity, high level of pleasure, high level of flow, it's just been like a Capricorn's dream, honestly. And and I haven't really seen anyone outside of doing pleasurable-based things. I had you know, I haven't had to be anywhere at any certain time. So I've been I've been tripping on bliss, and then my moon came and I was at home, and it arrived on this day that I had spent the morning doing jujitsu and sauna, and honestly, some really well needed just pottering around. And I got the I came home, I sat under loads of trees in the garden, and I got my tarot deck out, which I'm fairly new to, it's in the last couple of years, and I just really am not worried about needing to understand it at all. I'm just doing it, I'm just seeing what happens. And I pulled these three beautiful cards that felt so on point, and then I just felt my moon drop in like in the most beautiful, gentle way, and I lit some incense. I bought some amazing incense from a woman I met on Instagram, it's called Wild Monarch. She's in the west of France, she's from California, she's a herbalist and she practices ancient incense making, and I just love all that. You know I love that. If you've been listening for a while, you know my friend Persephone in LA, who makes the most mind-altering, psyche, karma-clearing scent experiences in just incredible. But she can't send stuff to me, so I was so happy to see this woman, I don't know her name, but Wild Monarch on Instagram, and she sells for like 18 quid. I got this discovery set, and all of the incense all of the incenses that she handmakes are I don't know what's in them. They're things she forages, they're natural things, but they all have names like Cersei and Moon, Cleopatra, um, what else? So they're all these kind of ancient um Medusa was one of them, and I was just like looking through it. I didn't need to smell any of them. I knew they were all gonna be amazing, but I was just looking through it and I was like, mmm, I'm feeling like I'm feeling like a witch. I'm feeling in my energy, I'm feeling disconnected from the outside mundane world. I'm feeling in my energy, I'm feeling in my work, I'm feeling in my voice. Cersei. So I lit these incense little bits, and I was just sitting there in the garden listening. I was gonna say smoking these incense sticks. It felt like that. And pulling this tarot, and it just felt so incredibly pleasurable. And in that space, I was reflecting the reason I'm in such a state of pleasure in these last few days is because I've had these few experiences of incredible competence where you know a lot of our lives, we're not c we can't be competent in every area of our lives all the time. And the reason we can't be competent in an in a really inspirational way is because, as in this reason that I'm about to say is inspiring, is because competence requires having made lots of mistakes, and the learning zone, of course, is always, but the learning, the acute learning zone is when we're first when we're making so many mistakes because we don't have the skills to be able to carry our experience. So if I've never learned Spanish before, it's a language. I need to learn that language. The language has a structure. There are rules, there are ways of finishing verbs, R E E, R, I, R, there are conjugational forms that I need to know in order to be able to wield these words and therefore communicate. There are noun structures, there are masculine, feminine, there are tense structures. So all of that has to happen. And even if you're really into it, it's gonna be unless you're some kind of phenomenally gifted linguist, which do exist, you know, like polyglots that can learn a language in a matter of months. But the only reason they can do that is because they've spent their life learning languages. I think the record for fluency in a language is like 17 languages, and there are people there, there's this Russian guy who who like, I don't know, learn Swahili in four months or something fluently, but these people are very rare breeds. So for the average people, you know, for us who are just your common linguist, you're gonna start you start with zero knowledge base, and then you build up this set of skills. And the set of skills and experience in language only comes from learning these tools, piecing bits of the puzzle together, and then speaking and then making a mistake. And you go, eh, miyama Loren, and they're like, Miyama, Miyamo Loren. And you're like, ah, okay, it's Miyamo Loren. And then you get corrected because of the mistake you've made. And this is what the learning experience is. You try something, you don't get it right, and you learn because the person with you goes, no, no, no, no, like this. So it's ah and you go, and they go, no, no, ah. And it's mirroring, it's neural mirroring, and it's how babies learn to walk and talk, and how we just about do everything. It's amazing. This podcast is not going to be about that, but it's also how we learn to do unhelpful things. It's also how we learn to stay in survival at all costs. It's also how we learn attachment over authenticity. It's it's okay, it's all for survival, but it's also how when we're trying to carve our own unique soul path, a lot of these things need to be unlearned. But this ain't about that today. This is about very basic apparatus of learning a language. And I'm saying language in a broad way, I don't just mean a spoken language. So to learn a language, we need tools, and then we build up the tools and we start to assemble sentences, and then sentences start to play with tenses, and we start to be able to speak. When I was young, I used to like purple. Now I don't like purple. I might like purple again in the future, you know, this kind of thing. And we start to be able to build a dimension that the other person can come into. And this is what language is, no? It's an incredible technology that in the same way animals don't have. So we build this dimension that another person can step into. We build a room with our language through the skills we've acquired through years and years and years of practicing it and making lots and lots of mistakes. Competence, so that's the learning zone, right? And it's infinite, it's forever. And the reason it's forever is because we're always growing in our capacity. So I'm always learning more about the subtleties of a language I'm already fluent in. I'm already, I'm always learning more because I'm learning about once you're fluent in a language, then you can learn the etymology, you can learn about the evolution of your language and how it's changed over time, you can learn about the you know, proto-language, you can so all of these things. So competence compounds, but to bring it back to this zone of learning where you're like, a year ago I couldn't speak any Spanish, and now I can. Eventually, on a path of learning, we move into a zone of competence. I'm not saying it's like the learning zone, the competence zone, excellence zone, but like let's let's crudely break it up into that. So in your life and in my life, there will be things that we are in the learning zone with. As in, I've started this in the last couple of years, right? And then there will be things that we're in a zone of competence with. Now, very likely, this is hopefully what we do in our work. Like, hopefully, our natural interests and competences through our own self-study and putting ourselves in situations, you know, if you're really into biology and botany, and you've always loved that, and you've always loved painting them, and you go to botany conferences and you collect old botany botanical drawings, and then you study herbalism and like you naturally have competence because you've self you've put yourself in that in those experiences your whole life, and so you've built up a natural kind of curriculum CV. So this zone of competence, then at the high at the kind of outer edges of that is characterized by this, and this is the experience I've had in the last few days. What shall I say first? I'll say it quite first actually. So I remember there was an interview I was listening to, it's probably the Krista Tippett one with John O'Donague, which if you haven't listened to in your life, what are you doing? It's medicine. I listen to it about a couple of times a year. Um, John O'Donohue, Krista Tippett, I can't remember the name of the podcast, but he talks about this experience of going to watch an orchestra in New York, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, one day, where he got to New York for an appointment, and he had found these tickets that were really hard to get. And he talks about the chief the lead violinist, and he described her competence in playing the violin in that anywhere she wanted to take the sound, she could.Anywhere she wanted to lead the energy, she could. Now, this is in the context of playing something that is a piece of music she didn't write, right? So it might be somebody is playing a certain concerto, someone is playing a certain piece of music, and ten people play it, and each person has a different level of competence with really getting into every nook and cranny of that thing. I've heard people sing summertime, and people can fill that song in different ways. And sometimes I've heard someone sing summertime, and it is like they are bending space-time with their voice, like they are taking you into Porgi and Best, they are taking you into a memory you don't even have a word for, and then other people it's like, Oh, that's a nice song, you're singing that song, that sounds good. So, competence at that artistic level. You could also talk about this with driving a Formula One car. Like, competence is when you've made lot, you don't when you're when you're engaging in something and there's a high level of competence, mistakes are lower, the stakes are higher, the responsibility is higher, the awareness and presence is higher, and the challenge is higher. So the stakes in general are higher. So this woman is performing in New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Don't know how many people are in the audience, it's gonna be in the thousands, the most famous event space in New York. And Jonna Donahue describes that her body became almost invisible because of the immensity of beauty coming through her skill and her competence, and any like she would she would stretch the notes on this violin to their absolute limit, so they were quivering and they almost broke her body. And he described it like she had this thin body, and the sound and the beauty almost broke her because it was so big, it was so stretched. Now I'm not comparing what I'm about to tell you to anything like that, but I love what he said in that anywhere she wanted to go with it, she could.Anywhere you want to go with the thing, you can, and I've experienced this pleasure in okay. So, say the concrete example of there's something I see in my mind, and I want to make it in jewellery, and it's very challenging, and it's very bold and very ambitious, and it's not normally done in jewellery, and I also have to consider the weight of it for the cost of gold. So there's technical things I need to consider, there's aesthetic things I need to consider, and then there's of course the overarching vibe needs to be right. All of those things need to coexpress in the piece for it to feel like I'm articulating something. For me, voice in my artwork, I have to let go of a lot. I cut 90% of what I do, not because I'm like ashamed of it or something, but because I have a high standard for myself and I'm constantly moving and I'm constantly gently but gratefully letting go of things that I don't feel are alive for me anymore or they've served their purpose. Now, this is different to a brand because I'm an artist, I'm not a brand that is releasing things that are going to be permanently available or whatever. As soon as I feel like the energy is gone from something, I can't knowingly, with full commitment and honesty, keep selling it. I move, that's what artists do. Like, think about Bjork, she doesn't meet the expectations of the old album in the next album. She's moving, she's moving with the energy of life. And being able to go exactly where you want to go in a certain medium or a certain thing takes a lot of practice, and I've only got that in a few parts of my life. For example, in cooking, I cannot do that. I can imagine things I want to make in the kitchen. I would try them and they won't be like that. They'll be fine, it will be fun. It's like, oh, like recently I made some jasmine syrup, which was very easy and didn't really demand any skill. But I can put that in something and it feels very elevated, it feels very unusual. But then if I want to get a bit more confident and start making the things that my mind can dream up, the actual reality is I haven't failed enough in the kitchen to have the level of competence that can do that. My partner can. He has failed so much, he's constantly trying new things, he's constantly making mistakes, and with that trying new things and making mistakes, he's developed competence in the kitchen so he can think of something that he fancies, you know, like, oh, I fancy this for dinner, spur of the moment, really fancy this, and he can just rustle it up because he's got that competence. I don't have that. So competence there, and well, I'd say excellence is being able to go and being able to actually lead somebody exactly where you want to lead them with your ability to be in a state of presence with that medium. So, going first starting on jewellery, I had this really pleasurable experience where I had these things I wanted to make and they were very strong, and I've got intense passion for them. And I was also scared because the stakes are high. Like, I'm scared that I'm gonna put three hours into making this wax, and I'm not I don't have an abundance of time right now, which is a massive thing I'm working on mentally. Like, that's definitely a massive belief I've got that that I've just never felt like I've got loads of time, so that's something I'm really working on in myself, and partly it's because I'm always so excited about what I want to make. I mean, I even think back to when I was a teenager, I felt like this. Once all my A levels and GCSE work was done, I just wanted to paint on my walls, and so I can never I I feel like I can never really completely chill by not doing, but I relax by creating, but I'm always wanting to create something else, and it is a bit of a problem because I I've developed this idea that there's never enough time, and I'm really working on it in myself. Anyway, I digress. So I had this experience where I was kind of scared of sitting and starting this work because it's so meaningful to me, and there's so much resting on it, and there's so much potentiality in it that I also am not immune to the fact that sometimes I sit there and I start to do it, and I can't take the materials where I want them to go. I can't say what I want to say, and that takes the wind out of your sails a bit, you know, it takes your mojo away. So when that happens, you you're like, okay, that's fine. I'm not in the zone of competence right now, I'm in the zone of learning. I just need to try again. I've made it's not a mistake, but you know, a mistake is a good word to carry this experience of it not being what you wanted, do it again, and do it again, and it only takes a few iterations, and you you're in that zone of competence, right? So I had this experience where, like, boom, I just put on my ADHD intense house music to focus, and in two hours I was able to say exactly what I wanted to say, and I made a little goat out of gold, and I know why I'm crying because it's just like it was so loaded for me, and there was so much energy in my fingertips, and I was worried I wasn't going to be able to make this goat small enough, and I somehow did, and I was looking at this wax goat, and I'm I'm sharing all this because I want you to know that it's in these very tiny moments of our lives that the most healing and medicinal energy sometimes can be accessed. I didn't film this moment, it's not on screen. Like the moments of healing in your life sometimes are where there's simply the most energy and the most presence, and they can be very mundane moments. I mean, my kitchen was a mess. I had to say to myself, Lauren, leave the kitchen, sit down and do this. The energy is high, do it. And when I had made this goat out of wax, I haven't sent it for casting yet, it was so tiny and it's just a goat's head. And I was like, This has been in my heart for so many weeks, and there was so much fear that I wouldn't be able to do it, which sounds so weird, but it it was there, and I let it be there. So there was this fear and this excitement, and I finally sat down and I was like, Wow, I've made a tiny goat, and then I could see these earrings that I'm gonna make in gold, and like they're right, the size works, the weight is gonna work, I've actually done this thing, and before the world needs to know about it, although you know about it now, just in in allegory, but before the world sees it, I have experienced so much satisfaction from being in that zone of competence. I I had this wax, I wanted to put my impression onto it, and I was able to do it. I was able to take the wax where I wanted it to go, and there is so much pleasure in that. And then I was like, okay, this has been so intense, I'm actually gonna quit while I'm ahead. I didn't work until I had nothing left. Um, I had other things I needed to do, so I stopped. And that medicine, it was so healing to be able to take it exactly where I wanted to take it, just like Don Adon John O'Donohue said about this woman performing in front of so many people, competence feels so pleasurable, and we feel I felt like I'd been seen, deeply, deeply seen. So, this woman playing this violin concerto, she was actually seen by the audience, but before they could see her, she had to feel seen within the within the aesthetic experience herself. And what you see someone do publicly is what they've practiced in private thousands and thousands of times. They've failed, they've got it wrong, they've pushed past hunger cues, they've pushed past the need to move, they've pushed past needing a wee, and they've got it wrong again and again and again until they get it right and until they can take it where they want to take it. And on the outside, she's hitting every note, but she knows she's got more to give, so she stays, she stays and it gets dark, she stays and she misses dinner, she knows she's got more in her and she keeps going, and eventually she gets it to take, she gets it to be taken where she wants it to be taken. And if you are an artist or somebody who focuses a lot on things and has to be, or an athlete, you know, or a leader who has or or a scientist who has to be in that intense level of focus, you know when you leave your work environment and you've got more to give, and you give it, and you give it, and you want to leave, and you want to go home, and you know you've got more in you, and you have to let people down, you have to cancel holidays. I'm not advising that, but I'm sharing that because I sometimes am astonished at the level of sacrifice I feel like it takes me to actually be myself. I feel like not everyone realizes that it takes so much sacrifice to be yourself, sacrifice of things that you want, as well as sacrifice of things that you're expected to do but never fucking wanted. You have to let people down, you have to be annoying and leave early. Like, I'm not saying you have to do this, you might have more of a social battery than I do, but I can't be doing things all the time, and it's so funny that these incredibly pleasurable experiences, of one of which I've just explained, the GOAT one, the next two I'm gonna tell you. Both of these experiences came from. I mean, none of the girls minded about me not going to Malta, as in, they got it, but it was hard to say I'm not gonna go. I lost almost a grand, all of those things, like it's hard to let yourself down for something you thought you wanted and needed, and then paid for. It's hard to do that, it's hard to do what you know you need to do, and especially I'm someone who I don't commit to things very often because I don't like to let people down. I prefer to not commit and not go than commit and change my mind last minute. But the last few months I've been having to change my mind last minute, and I don't like that about myself, but I've had to do it. I don't, you know, this whole go with the flow, do what feels right. I try not to live like that. I try to keep by my commitments, but anyway, I've had to do it, and what has come out on the other side of that is I've gone from feeling not quite like my feet are on the ground to my feet feel so on the ground, and I'm the ground is following me where I go, and I am following the ground, like I am dancing with the ground of being, and that is this experience of competence, and it's not every moment I'm gonna go and try and articulate something else, and the wax won't go where I want it to go, and I'll be back in the zone of practice, but enough practice, and we get into this zone of competence, and with enough focus and awareness, that zone of competence is so pleasurable. It's what flow state is. No, it's like this incredible experience of high challenge, high stakes, high skill, high competence, and you can meet it there. The second experience I had was I'll do it in time linearity. The second experience I had was jujitsu on Friday evening, which is a sparring-oni class. So, what that means is you basically go, you do some warm-ups, which were so fun. I've watched kids do warm-ups like this before, but I've never done one myself because I've not been to this class. And the warm-ups are like cartwheels and bear crawl and combat rolls, which is where you're standing up and you roll on the floor into a somersault from standing, but you roll onto your shoulder, so you kind of tuck your arm under your body. So if you're rolling onto your left shoulder, you tuck your left arm onto your right side and kind of roll, and it's just so much fun. Um, what other things like side kind of crab walks and stuff like that? And it was just so much fun, it was super hot, everyone was sweaty. There were 35 men there that evening, and me, and that's because most of the women had gone to Malta, and then a couple of the other women were like injured or whatever. I've been training now for a couple of years, and so I feel really comfortable with a lot of these men, and also I've been training for a couple of years, so my zone of competence is starting to emerge, and jujitsu isn't feeling it, doesn't feel like a foreign language anymore. It feels like a language, but certainly not a language I'm fluent in, but a language I can start to speak, and I can have conversations with people in jiu-jitsu, as in in the language of jiu-jitsu, and so we had six sessions of sparring, so that's would it have been six seven-minute rounds, right? So you slap and you tap, and then you go, and everyone was dripping in sweat. I mean, the sweat it was like not just you know, your head and back is swaying, it's like your forearms are sweating, your thighs are sweating, it was insane. It was just and there was loud music on, it was just so wildly medicinal. I just love it so much. But I had some roles that were so in that zone of competence, like it was no position was really stuck for more than a couple of seconds. There were so many exchanges going on. Do you know capoeira? You know, when you're watching people who are really competent in capoeira, you have this experience too that someone is taking their partner somewhere, and like if you watch a maestra performing or playing capoeira with people who really experienced it, it's just the most incredible expression of competence into excellence, and you're looking at them and you can tell that what is being the movements that are being driven are purely because that person wills them to go that way. They're not, you know, sometimes in life it feels like we're moving from a place of um picking up the pieces or improvising what what is there so we can get something because we're not really in control, and life can be like that sometimes. There are areas of my life I feel like that, and I'm picking up the pieces, like the domestic environment in my house at the moment, we're in such a season of expansion and growth, and it's so exciting. But there are things that need doing around the house. There are piles of DIY around the house, and it very much feels like we're sort of we're coping with the house situation. It doesn't feel like I'm leading it, it feels like we're we're living in it and we're doing our best, but we're sort of picking up pieces and we're doing what we can. So there are areas in our lives that are different in different ways. But this seven rounds of sparring in jujitsu with seven different men of all different sizes, but no, no heavyweights, because I don't do that anymore. Girls, if you know, you know. Just like too many injuries for a someone who weighs 54 kilos to be training with a bigger man who's not high level. And this experience of being in a flow state and someone trying to attack you, someone was trying to attack me, and I managed to turn that attack to leverage it against them into a defense that then turned into an attack on them. They would then magically turn that into attack on me, and the whole thing was just so much fun and a massive learning experience, and so much fun. And after each one, it was like, thank you so much, that was amazing. And so that was an incredible experience of competence, and I've really earned that in jiu-jitsu. Nobody starts jujitsu competent, even if you're a black belt in karate or taekwondo or capoeira. You don't start because it's a language you have to learn, it's a complex skill that you have to learn. Yes, your background will help you. If you already speak Latin, you're gonna be helped with French. If you already speak um Spanish, Italian is gonna be a bit easier for you, but you still have to learn Italian. You have to learn Italian culture is distinct from Spanish culture. There's the mafia for one, you know, all of this kind of thing. And so starting to learn the language of jiu-jitsu and being able to have conversations with my body, with other people in this language is immensely pleasurable. It is immensely pleasurable, and starting to think a few moves ahead is immensely pleasurable. It's like I couldn't even fathom that when I started training, just on the defence all the time, like just trying trying to survive, trying not to get tapped, you know. The third experience I've had in the last few days of this is I was at an event in London yesterday and I met a lovely client, most amazing woman, and you know, yes, she brought some jewellery, but honestly, we went into this incredible rabbit hole, wormhole of conversation, and it felt the same thing. Like I felt like I was I could be so unhinged, I could be so myself. Wherever I wanted to go, I could go there and she would follow me. She was like, Yeah, I know that reference you've just put onto the put into the mix here that's completely different from what we were talking about two minutes ago. I know that reference. Here's my claim to that reference, here's my experience with that reference, and I'll give you this, I'll top your reference with this. What do you reckon of that? I was like, Oh, that's interesting. This is my assumption of that, but I don't quite know what that is. Can you clarify that for me? She's like, Yeah, so listen to this. The whole thing was the most incredible exchange of listening and speaking and learning, and she said things that I'd never thought of before about things that I have thought of before. And then I started talking about things that she had no experience with, but she met me there with her experience, and it was the whole thing again was this experience of I felt like I didn't ask her this, but I feel like both of us felt like wow, what an amazing conversation. We traveled far, wide, deep, backwards, forwards, left, right, up, down, stillness movement, and wherever one of us wanted to go, the other person followed, and then was led somewhere completely different. It really was like traveling, and again, it was it took a high level of competence from us. The match was really beautiful because it was she's a craniosacral therapist, really into astrology, really into tarot, very, very skilled person, really into cacao ceremony, but has this incredible kind of well academic grounding really in craniosacral therapy, which you have to study three years, you have to do anatomy and physiology, you know, it's a it's a legit training. So she's got this intellectual vigour, she's got this energetic sensitivity, she's got this experience in the spiritual world, having grown up in a Muslim country, having lived in London. She brought so much and so much reflection and sensitivity. And then when I started saying things and bringing things that neither of us were expecting, we went from talking about Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy. Anthroposophy, whatever, and and education to jujitsu. And I was talking about how I think women can learn more from having a coaching, because I've been coaching, you know, if you're put with a white belt and you coach a newbie in jujitsu, I see it as like I'm teaching them embodiment, like feminine embodiment through accessing their aggression, which which is very often a part of a woman that she's disassociated from, but not aggression and like right, give me your rage, just aggression and like come to me and mean it. Like put your hand on me, try and take me to the ground, but mean it. I want to see you mean it. I want to feel that you mean it. I want to feel in body that you mean what you're doing. Because if you don't mean it, one of us could get injured. If you mean it, it will be safe. So it's been a really interesting experience, and that as well. So this third and final thing was this experience of wow, this was such an experience of competence from both of our part and the pleasure of being led and guided, and then simultaneously, or taking it into switching between leading and being led by another person, and it could be so. I've had three examples: one was a conversation, two was jujitsu, which is a conversation with the body, and the third one was my experience with the goat, which was a conversation with my materials and me. So the materials were speaking, saying, This is my limit, mate, you can't do more than this, but you might be able to pull me in this direction, depending on your skill. Give it a go. And I'm like, Okay, I'm listening, and so again, a conversation, and so this high level of competence is experienced, and it's such a flow state, and it's so pleasurable. So, what I wanted to to summarize this podcast with this episode is yes, learning zone. I've talked a lot about that, haven't I? In episodes, and I love the learning zone, and like there are things I'm learning at the moment, and I'm very incompetent with. Incompetence can also be a real gift in the arts as well, because you know, within competence, we we with incompetence but but an open heart, you can like a lot of outside art is like that to me. It's just so it's not competent often from a technical perspective, but there's so much soul in it. So, if you don't have competence in an area, you do not start judging yourself, okay? But what I'm asking here is for you to think about an area that you do have competence in, that you are a leader in. Like, what could you teach other people about? What have you failed? Heard a good quote recently: a leader is somebody who's failed in all the ways it's possible to fail in a certain modality or a certain subject matter. Because if you have them the more you fail, the more you know, and the only reason I'm able to now articulate these tiny golden goats that I just cannot tell you how excited and and yeah, how excited I am about them. The only reason I'm able to articulate these tiny golden goats is because the rate at which I create and and innovate and experiment is so high. I just move quickly through so many limitations through failing. Failing can be really expensive in jewelry. So if you're failing in jewelry, make sure you fail in a less expensive material. Fail in brass, fail in um FIMO, fail in something that's not going to cost loads to fail in. So, what is there? Is there an area in your life where you're really looking to get more satisfaction from? Think about what you're competent in and think about how you can create an environment where you can take somebody, whether they're a participant, whether it's like a partner thing, sex can be like this. Like, can you take someone where you want to take them? And do they have the stamina and the you know the fitness and open-mindedness to be guided into where you want to take them, or do they shut down? And that's what makes amazing love making. No, is it's that exchange between I'm gonna take you here, but can you come with me? Or someone's gonna try and take you somewhere, but can you actually go with them? Can you hold it? Can you hold that awareness without shutting down? Can you hold the pleasure without shutting down? And this is what competence in the arts is like. So I'm very interested in this very small area that I have in my life at the moment where I'm flirting between confidence and glimmers of excellence sometimes come. For me, excellence is when I create something that really feels like it's my work, and I feel like all of the practice things that I've ever done have coalesced to be this maybe one or two pieces. Maybe in a lifetime I'll have 10, 20 pieces, you know, just like often painters, they're known for 50 paintings, but they've had lifetimes of sketchbooks and scribbles on walls and all that kind of stuff, and that's how they're developing competence, that's how they're developing their true voice. And often those little sketches on the walls and those little mistakes to us are amazing because they show so much energy. But when you leave the life, you're often left with these few kind of big bits of contribution in different areas, and maybe that contribution is you've raised a family of outstanding absolute smashes because you've poured your heart and soul into your community. You know, maybe that's maybe that's what you're left with for the next generation, which is outstanding. So, to summarize, I feel like being in the zone of competence is really this experience of having the ground following us and us following the ground, and it is really a connected experience to the senses. But we can't be in a zone of competence if you're to be in competence, you have to be in your body, you have to be in the present moment, you have to read the room of your materials, whether it's the paint, the weather, the expression on someone's face, the tension in the body, whatever the metaphor is, you've got to read that room. When I've just given that left field example in my conversation, have they got it? Or have I taken them somewhere that they don't have reference for? In which case, I'm gonna have to explain the joke, explain the reference, and the thing's not gonna land, which is fine, but it's not that incredible flowing conversation where you're like, fuck, I didn't realise we'd end up here. This is amazing! How did we get here? Oh my god, this is so expansive! Thank you, thank you for this experience of incredible learning and receptivity and domination and submission, and oh my god, not all conversations are going to be like that, and frankly, life would actually be quite intense, maybe quite draining if it was, because just like night and dark follow day and light, the reason the dark is healing in the dark way is because the light is life-giving in the light way, and I don't want every conversation to be like that. I think I'd be quite drained if every conversation was like this incredible traveling experience. Sometimes you just want a quickie. So, competence then. If you feel drained by life and you want to come back into this feeling of really feeling connected to what you're doing, try not to make it about your whole life and try and think about zones where you have enough practice to be so bold as to invite in competence. How can you increase the level of competence of something you're already good at? They say, you know, I was talking in the last episode about how to become more obsessed, and often competence will dwindle when we lose interest. Like you can only be truly competent in an area that you're highly interested in. Otherwise, you're never going to get into excellence in a zone that you're not interested in. You can't force your way into that, or rather, I should say, maybe you can't get into genius in a zone you're not interested in. Because for the competence to be there and that sustained effort over time, you have to be really interested in. You have to self-you know, that's the reason why those of us that create podcasts, it's not an effort to release an episode every week or every two weeks because we're so interested in this niche thing we're talking about. It's only when people create a podcast because they think there's some kind of strategy involved in it. Oh, if I do that, then you're gonna lose interest because the moment's gonna move and the thing's gonna change. But if you do it because it's something you're talking about, regardless or not of whether there's a mic there, that interest is never gonna go, and you can sustain that over time and over dips in motivation. Being in a state of competence with a thing, with another person, with a material, with our art, is just one of the most profound pleasures of this world and of this life, and it is so deeply connected to embodiment. So if you feel disconnected from your life, if you feel disconnected from things in your life, from practices in your life, from your hands, how could you up the level of competence so that you're having these incredibly potent conversations either with the invisible or with your art form or with tango, salsa, something that you need another person for, so that you can experience that incredible nectar of the flow state? How could you do that so you're not always in the learning zone and you're actually focusing in on things that you can become competent in, and that there's a voice for you, and that you can take the thing where you want to take it, and you feel like you're back in control, that you're back as a creator, because feeling out of our zone of competence and feeling scattered, and the reason this episode podcast is called the feeling of your of the ground moving with your feet is because I wanted to directly contrast that with the experience of your feet not touching the ground, you know, that which is how I felt leading up to my decision to not go to Malta. Felt like my feet hadn't touched the ground, and I experience competence in my work and in my voice when my feet are on the ground and the ground is moving with me, or rather, my feet are on the ground and I'm moving with the ground, but as the ground is normally solid and doesn't move, let's say the ground is moving with me. My voice only really comes from this feeling of groundedness, which is competence. So if you feel like your feet aren't on the ground, you feel overwhelmed, you feel disconnected, how can you come back to the ground of your experience, but not just generically, like come back to your ground, come back to center, do some earthing in the garden. Yeah, but for me, the most potent way to access that in a way that fills me with pleasure, but also expresses work that you can then share with people or expresses artistic intelligence that you can build on is actually bring that grounding practice into something you're already really good at and experience grounding through your practice, through your art form. So bring that desire and that need to articulate into your work, into that painting. There will be a time where you're like, today's the day, today's the fucking day, my golden goal is coming. So competence, the feeling of the ground moving with your feet in little pockets of groundlessness, may you find these moments of deep connection, this earth and the elements, and may you may you wield your skills, your senses, and your articulate heart into a piece of work that lands in the heart of another, a conversation, an experience of language, of speaking in another language that's not the language you were raised with. And may you experience the deepest pleasure in this and know that this world has pockets of incredible, beautiful, grounded competence, connection, and flow for you, waiting for you. And it is the most exquisitely pleasurable thing ever. And I want that for you, and I love that for you. See you next time.