I'd love to hear your thoughts in this podcast I'd love to hear your thoughts in this podcast 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.
