HOW EFFECTIVE ARE YOUR SKILLS?

HOW EFFECTIVE ARE YOUR SKILLS?

A meta-skills course, the skills underneath effective skill use.

Knowing a skill and being able to use it effectively 

are two very different things.

Most of us have accumulated countless ways of coping, 

communicating, solving problems, managing emotions, 

and getting through difficult situations. Some of those 

strategies work quite well. Others may have worked 

once, worked in a different situation, or helped us survive 

an earlier period of our lives—but aren’t particularly 

effective anymore. And sometimes we keep using the same 

strategy simply because we don’t know what else to do.

How Effective Are Your Skills? teaches you how to 

become a more thoughtful observer of your own 

behavior so you can determine what is working, 

what isn’t, and what you might want to do differently.

Rather than automatically reacting and hoping for the best, 

you’ll learn to slow things down enough to ask:

What was I trying to accomplish?
What did I actually do?
What happened afterward?

Did my response move me closer to what I wanted

—or farther away?

What could I change the next time?

That may sound simple, but it requires 

an important set of underlying abilities.

Before we can change our behavior, 

we have to be able to notice it.

Before we can evaluate a skill, 

we have to be able to observe what was happening 

within us and around us without immediately judging, 

defending, blaming, or explaining it away.

That is why this course begins with some of the 

foundational skills that make all other skill 

development possible: awareness, mindfulness, 

observation, intentional attention, and learning 

how to create a little space between what happens 

and what we do next. You’ll practice becoming 

more aware of your thoughts, emotions, 

physical sensations, impulses, assumptions, 

and behaviors as they occur. You’ll also learn to look 

backward at situations after they happen and 

examine them  as if you were watching game film.

What happened first?

What were you thinking and feeling?

What did you do?

What happened next?

And where might you have made a different choice?

This kind of review isn’t about criticizing 

yourself or deciding you “handled it wrong.”

It is about learning from your own life, 

how to use your skills effectively.

We will also explore why skills sometimes fail 

even when they are good skills. Perhaps the skill 

didn’t match the problem. Maybe your emotions 

were already too intense by the time you tried to use it. 

Perhaps you knew what to do intellectually 

but had not practiced it enough to access it under stress. 

Or maybe an old habit took over before you even 

realized you had a choice. Understanding why 

something didn’t work gives you information 

you can actually use. Throughout this course, 

you’ll build the foundation for becoming increasingly 

skillful at living your life—not because you will 

always make the perfect choice, but because 

you will become better at observing, evaluating, 

learning, adjusting, and trying again.

In this course, you will learn to:

•  
• Recognize when a familiar strategy is—or isn’t—
• actually working; identify what you were trying 
• to accomplish before evaluating your response;
• use basic mindfulness to notice thoughts, 
• emotions, sensations, urges, and behaviors;
• strengthen your ability to observe yourself 
• without judging yourself; understand the 
• difference between simply having a skill and 
• using it effectively; examine difficult interactions 
• and situations after they occur; use a detailed
• behavior-chain approach to understand what led 
• to a particular response; recognize where another 
• choice might have become possible; strengthen 
• the mental “muscle” required to pause, notice, and choose;
• and use your own experiences as information for continued growth.

The goal isn’t perfection.

The goal is becoming increasingly able to recognize:

“That worked.”

“That didn’t work.”

and, perhaps most importantly,

“Next time, I will do this differently.”

That is how skills become more than ideas.

They become part of how you live and grow.