The last video of the course, I want to thank you for watching the videos. I hope you're already starting to practice your new skills, and that they are already starting to see the value that they can bring. I want to talk just a little bit about practice. I told you at the beginning of this that skill development is one of my research areas. And really, what it comes down to is the time you spend practicing the skill. Every guitar teacher knows this. Every dance teacher knows this, etc. They can give all the information they want to a student. But ultimately, it's in the students hands to take that information, practice the skills. And as they practice, those skills become habits, and they just become natural. One of the things we've found that helps people to kind of stick with the practices to understand a couple of things about how practice works. So I just want to go through this really quickly. So first of all, why are we practicing? Well, there was a real distinction between how we learn information, and how we learn skills. Imagine a musical instrument. You can learn a lot about a guitar from somebody telling you a bunch of information, so you can gain all sorts of information. But if you want to learn to play the guitar, you can't do it just by sucking up information. You need to play the guitar, and you're going to do it not very well at first. But with continued practice, you slowly get better and better and better. And that's the only way to develop a skill. They always start [SOUND], and then you put in the practice. And eventually, it becomes something that's just easy for you. But let's talk about that part, that eventually, because here are the things that I think are really important to understand. As we develop skills, we're investing time into our practice. And it's a very common result that you have to invest quite a bit up front before you start to see a return, before you start to see those skills kind of come up, and so be aware of that. That's how it works at early on. It may seem like, I don't know, I'm practicing these things, but I'm still feeling totally stressed, and it's not working for me. Be careful of that, it's not working. Stick with it, put in the time, get through that early part, because then it starts to take off. You reach a point where suddenly, as you practice more, you're seeing big skill gains. So that's step one. Ride out that first trick. The second important point is that in fact, it can even be a little worse than I implied right there. When we start developing a skill, we have what some people call unconscious incompetence. We're not very good at that skill. For example, managing your stress reaction. But if you don't realize it, then you feel like you're okay. As you start to learn more about the skill, and how it should work, you reach what we call conscious incompetence. You start to realize you're not very good at that. And that can actually make you feel like it's a drop [LAUGH], like you were happier before that happened then after. But that's a critical point to reach, is this conscious incompetence? And once you're there, then that's really kind of over here that's starting this one over here. And so that's when you really start to put the time and effort in. And again, eventually, you'll reach what we call conscious competence. You'll start to see those gains, and you'll start to feel like you're doing better. And then if you keep putting in the skill, you'll reach unconscious competence. This is that cop. That cop that's already good at doing this stuff may not even be aware that of what they're doing anymore. After a while, the skill just becomes second nature. So just kind of be aware of these things as you're learning the skill, that the first part is the toughest. You gotta ride through that first part, then you start to feel the gains kick off. And then if you can stick with it, then you can reach the point where it really does become habit, second nature. And that's really where you want to get to kind of help you get there. And I've already kind of hit on these points, but I want to stress them again. Early on, in that toughest part, you might want to rely on external aids to help you continue to practice. This is the place where sometimes people just don't bother. They just walk away, and they don't practice anymore. External aids can help you stick with it, so these could include these notifications that I've talked about. Having your phone kind of say, hey, it's time to check in. Or of course, we talked about having partners kind of do that for you every now and then. Say hey, maybe you want to check in scheduling times for guided relaxation. I mentioned that, schedule specific times. And then do it during those times to make sure you keep doing it, and even having others tell you if you're not listening. So for example, remember, I said share that active listing lecture perhaps with family members or others. They can be pretty good at saying listen, let me speak, and that's all you sometimes need to say. Okay, let me practice that. So rely on these other supports early on. Over time, you should be able to phase those out, and you should start to naturally. You should start to get a habit of practicing. Quite honestly, practicing to notice, practicing relaxation, practicing listening, and this is more that conscious. This is when you're in the conscious incompetence to conscious competence part, right? And it kind of gets you along through that part. And then, if you're not already, you will become that cop, the one who seems calm, but ready and authority, but also a human, someone who diffuses anxiety naturally. And is better able to control and respond well to all of the stresses they're carrying, both in the acute situations respond better in those, but also in the chronic situations, able to give yourself a break every now and then. That's that's really what we hope. Let me mention, by the way, I have another course on Coursera that if you type mind control. And the first part of it is similar to what we've been talking about here, but then go on and talk about some other devices you can use to kind of manage your anxiety as well. So you may want to go on and take a look at that course as well. But this is what I thought was core for helping you with your work. So finally, I want to end just by saying a very sincere thank you, a sincere thank you to all of you. A sincere thank you to Dave, who really continually has been keeping me aware of just how difficult the job is that you guys deal with. And in fact, one of the things that makes it tough is that it's largely thankless, right? You do the things you do. And very seldom do people come and say, hey, I really appreciate what you just did there, thank you very much. So I want to do that, I want to say thank you. Thank you for the work you guys are doing. It is absolutely critical. I really hope this course will help you feel a little bit more in control of your anxiety as you face the situations you face. I very much appreciate what you do. Thank you, and good luck with out everything you're doing. Okay, bye-bye.
