Moving the toothpick.

So, it's funny what people notice and don't notice, learn or miss, or observe and assume. We all have our own natural skills and instincts that allow us to benefit from our abilities to adapt and change that we sometimes take for granted.

Apparently my business coach tells me that I have an innate ability to establish relationships with people at a deeper level than most. This is a good thing AND a bad thing. First of all, let us establish the ranking systems of said skills

1) Conscious Competent
2) Unconscious Competent <-- Earl is HERE (Relationship Building)

3) Conscious Incompetent

4) Unconscious Incompetent

The problem with being unconsciously competent is that I'm not aware of the skillsets that I'm using (or not using for that matter). However the fact of the matter is that we're all unconsciously competent in one field or another. But we'll visit this at a deeper level another time. Today's lesson was a simple but eye opening one. Alvin Yip and I were having dinner at Earl's Restaurant on Lougheed Hwy and I watched him eat his very intimidating hamburger when I noticed him do something that to me was completely out of the ordinary. Instead of pulling out the toothpick and making a giant mess of a sandwich, or eating around the toothpick to keep the structural integrity of my sandwich intact (yes, this is about as profound as I get around 3am) he just moved it to another part of the sandwich.

1) Conscious Competent

2) Unconscious Competent

3) Conscious Incompetent

4) Unconscious Incompetent <-- Earl is HERE (Structural Sandwich Eating)

The funny thing is that all of this time, I thought that I was destined to always have a mess on my hands at the whim of my sandwiches. However on Alvin's side, he was already running a corporation and able to write off many things before I had even realized that this was the more tax efficient way of living. Strangely enough is that he was looking forward to finally earning a steady regular paycheque back then, and he's working his darndest to go back to the structure where he could write things off again. It took the Infiniti Point project to show him that he was once already on the right path, and how to get back on it, and it took dinner tonight to teach me how to move the toothpick to a different part of the sandwich so that everything is still held together, and I'm no longer hostage to the combination of bread and fillings. Overall, I'm thinking... good trade.