Unlearning is crucial for change

Unlearning is crucial for change: Illustration of three brain phases of learning. "Learn" (connections made inside the brain), "Unlearn" (connections removed from the brain), and "Relearn" (different connections made inside the brain).Unlearning is crucial for change.

We often think of change as additive. We become wiser by “learning something new”. What we often overlook is that changing our beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions involves unlearning as well as learning.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read & write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”
Alvin Toffler

Unlearning first requires noticing. We are skilled at habituating our circumstances, no matter how unusual. Habituation is valuable because it allows us to adapt to changes in our environment. But habituation also makes it harder to notice that we may need to change our current thinking or behavior.

Thus there’s a delicate balance, a dance, between noticing what is rather than what has become our default ways of thinking, understanding, and acting.

Note that unlearning is not the same as forgetting. Forgetting is the failure to remember what’s still important. (The Japanese remind us of this when you get off a bus.)

I have spent over fifty years unlearning what people and society told me I was and should be. I’m still on a complex journey of relearning who I am. I work to practice being me in each moment. Change work involves not only intellectual shifts and reinterpretations but also the unlearning of habitual responses to emotional experiences and their empathetic replacement.

So remember, unlearning is crucial for change!

Photo attribution: Flickr user gforsythe and Cathy Davidson

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