At birth you learn to take your first breath until death taking a last breath.
Endless learning brings joy, advancement, curiosity, vicarious travels, limitless knowledge.
As futurist Alvin Toffler once wrote, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”
Learning and unlearning are required to move forward!
Begin at the beginning. In order to pick up a new skill, even if it’s similar to something you already can do, learn what makes it different. All of us repeat things that worked in the past, even when they don’t apply to the now. Repeating isn’t always a bad strategy, but when there is a significant difference, the old approach holds you back.
I know how to kayak and canoe so I thought Dragon Boating would be so easy, wrong. Different techniques! What I already knew wasn’t as useful as what I needed to learn fresh. Meanwhile, my friend, a complete novice, made significant progress from the first day.
Stay open. Unlearning doesn’t require you to toss out all your accumulated experiences or presume previous know-how will keep you from success. Rather, it asks that you stay open to different ways of getting things done.
What happens when you begin a new job? You learn about the new organization and the department where you’ll work while you unpeel the mindset and procedures of the groups you just left. Your refusal to unlearn old rules (for instance, comparing everything to the way it worked at the old company) leaves you out of the corporate culture and keeps you from getting a clear sense of the job. By thinking, “This is how we did it where I used to work,” you miss learning opportunities and you avoid moving in. If you go in looking at how the new organization works, thereby replacing your old activities with new ones, you systematically begin to forget what’s no longer useful and you begin to prepare for what’s next.
Look for mirrors. Make it easy for your boss, coworkers, employees, family, and friends to give you guidance by asking for it. The more people you have in your life who help you reflect on your behaviors, the greater your chance to gain an accurate sense of how other people perceive you and which actions to unlearn.
Examine your beliefs. Your beliefs determine your behavior and it’s difficult to act inconsistently with your beliefs for very long. When you believe you already know the right way to do things, everything else can seem wrong. Why then would you want to unlearn what you’re currently doing, let alone replace it with something else?
So what are you going to unlearn first? Create a list of several approaches. Write it your journal or on a sticky note to post on the computer, the television, the dashboard, or your desk- have fun!
