What stage are you at?

My osteo finds me challenging. As switched on as I might be in my mind or when it comes to business, she tells me, I don’t communicate well with my own body.

I’m not aware of what my body is telling me, which is why every now and then I’ll find myself crippled with back pain lying on the floor in tears. It seems lack of communication has more of an impact that even I’d realised!

Initially I had no idea what my body was telling me. Now I’ve progressed to being aware… I’m aware that I have no idea – but it’s still a progression!

As I was discussing this with my osteo, the nerd in me was putting the info into the shape of a simple matrix.

• Stage 1: Unconscious of the fact that I don’t communicate well with my body.
• Stage 2: Aware of the fact that I don’t communicate well.
• Stage 3: Consciously communicating with my body (based on changes in my actions).
• Stage 4: Unconsciously communicating implicitly.

After nerd-Kirsty was finished structuring this in my mind I realised it’s a simple model for how we learn most things.

Take scripts and dialogues, vital for those working in sales environments, but also exceptionally important in most job roles so that answers and communication is consistent and appropriate.

We all tend to start at stage 1 – perhaps before entering the industry where we don’t know that we have no idea what to say in a certain situation.

As we start our initial steps into the industry we move to stage 2 when someone asks us something that stumps us, something we don’t have the answer to.

Hopefully, we then go away, find the answer and figure out how to effectively communicate it – stage 3.

And finally, after some time spent practicing at stage 3, the same question or opportunity to say something occurs and because of the time we spent going through the first stages, it’s second nature to us. The correct and appropriate answer slides from our tongue like quicksilver.

The sign of a substandard player? Someone who never gets past stage 1 – not knowing they know nothing.

The sign of a truly great player? Someone who isn’t afraid to revert back to stage 2 when they hear an even better answer or way to explain which will then lead us back up through stages 3 and to an eventual even better stage 4.

What stage are you at right now with:

• your scripts and dialogues?
• your business expertise?
• your relationships?
• and just for my osteo – your own internal communication with your body?

Kirsty Dunphey is the youngest ever Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year, author of two books (her latest release is Retired at 27, If I Can do it Anyone Can) and a passionate entrepreneur who started her first business at age 15 and opened her own real estate agency at 21. Now Kirsty does lots of fun things which you can read about here. Her favourite current projects are Elephant Property, a boutique property management agency, Baby Teresa, a baby clothing line that donates an outfit to a baby in need for each one they sell andReallySold, which helps real estate agents stop writing boring, uninteresting ads.