When Conscious Incompetence REALLY hurts!

Most of my trainer friends will know what conscious incompetence means (that's not an insult by the way guys) and the rest of you have probably experienced it when you've tried to learn something new. I've seen the harshness of it on the slopes many times. So what is it? Weeeellll, you know when you are going to try something new like say snowboarding? You feel excited about the prospect of wooshing down the slopes and looking really cool, you can hear the SSX3 or James Bond sountrack in your head whilst you picture yourself doing jumps and being very popular in the bar after for it.
But then....you actually strap your feet into the board, you feel pretty wobbly, and it is then that you realise...you're crap!
Yes and this realisation followed by a painful period whereby you keep knocking over ski schul kids over is the "Conscious Incompetence" (i.e. you know you're crap) stage of learning.
What I'm really trying to say in a very longwinded way is that I gave up on doing my PADI after the 1st day because I felt "conscious incompetence" (crap), and instead of feeling weighless, free and liberated under water, I felt claustophobic, trapped, uncomfortable. IIIIII hated it!!!
So how do you get over the Conscious Incompetent stage of learning and enter the conscious competence stage (this is when you can do it but you have to think about it - ski schul is now safe but you're still a bit stiff on the board)???
In my case I cried for about 4 days, I read "Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway", and you throw up with jealousy at Chris who is obviouly loving it...and then...you give it a second go. So despite being concerned about the fact that on my first dive I was alone with a deadly poisonous sea snake for 5 minutes, I have now finished my Open Water PADI and got to have Chris as my buddy on my last two dives which was cool.
Chris is an interesting buddy....he is like a sea monkey jumping around all over the shop! He uses his oxygen up really fast because he chases EVERYTHING and he also has a habit of touching EVERYTHING. Yesterday he touched the back of a massive leathal jelly fish...I'm just glad he didn't touch the tentacles, Phew!
Before I go here are the 4 stages of learning.
Unconscious incompetence - you don't yet know you're rubbish, you are excited about learning and probably have dellusions that you'll be "naturally good at it" (especially the boys!)
Conscious incompetence - Oh oh, you just found out you're not so "naturally good at it" after all. You feel the mental and physical strain of learning something new.
Conscious competence - Ah now you've got the hang of it, you can do it BUT you still have to think about it. You'll hear a little voice in your head saying things like "turn, turn, turn, TURN TURN NOW"
Unconscious competence - You're great at it now, you can snowboard down the slopes checking out the Austrian beauty in the gold all in one and forget about what you're doing.

The end