The Four Stages of Learning: Can mistakes made be a blessing in disguise?

No matter who you are you have to go through the four stages of learning before you can truly understand and master a skill. Everyone from Steve Jobs to the Queen of England to Joe your neighbor have to start at square 1 when learning something new. Let’s take a look at the four stages:
 
Stage 1: You don’t know what you don’t know
You walk into a situation thinking you are going to have Outcome A but it turns into Outcome B. Things don’t work out like you thought and now confusion and frustration set in. What do you do next? Embrace and love it. You are on your way to learning a new skill!
 
Stage 2: Know what you don’t know
This is where most people beat themselves up and slap themselves on the head saying, “I should have known that.” Don’t worry, more times than not you probably had no idea what was going to happen until looking back in hindsight. Now your brain is processing the information and you are teaching yourself.
 
Stage 3: Know what you know
Alright so now you have the knowledge. What are you going to do with it?
 
Stage 4: Don’t know what you know
You’re working on instinct. Things just happen as you are in action without forethought or consciousness…you are in the zone.
 
There it is…the four stages of learning and now you can see that making mistakes are often a blessing in disguise if you can find the learning path.  So don’t worry when things go wrong.  Worry more if you still don’t know what you don’t know.