Unlearning

How do we look beyond what we see? We can, by unlearning. 

Unlearning means developing an alternative mental model. It is a different way of looking at things. It's about trying to explore more and broadening our horizons. It's about acknowledging there are many narratives and different stories other than the one we know or what we have learned. For when we learn, we add to our existing knowledge and build on it. 

Unlearning on the other hand is about understanding that our current learning may be flawed, biased, or needs to be challenged. It is about stepping outside our mental models taking a fresh look at what we hold in our minds. It's very much about acknowledging and accepting a different one from what we see. There are high chances that what we were seeing or holding true could be incomplete and ineffective. 

Unlearning, thus, is the process of realizing that something which we learned earlier is incorrect, ineffective, or obsolete, admitting it, and deciding to erase such bad conditioning and misconceptions from our mind for good. We unlearn when we embrace new paradigms and willingly move towards acknowledging varied possibilities that exist. 

But how do we unlearn? How do you move beyond what we see? How do we pursue multiple narratives and points of view? 

 

One of the first things in the process of unlearning is being prepared to change one's perspective. To put it more bluntly is to say we should be ready to be proved wrong. It is about accepting nothing is absolute and realizing what is good today may not be so tomorrow. And if this is to happen then we need to nurture an unquenching thirst for knowledge and an ability to keep questioning our assumptions of what we know. Do they still hold true? What has changed? What has evolved? How? Why? This inquisitiveness holds the key to unlearning. 

Having a creative and critical bent of mind fuels this inquisitiveness and helps us recognize that the old mental models (or what we feel we see) are no longer relevant. This however is a challenge because most models or narratives are unconsciously embedded in our minds and difficult to do away with. 

This is where creating new models based on removing what is not required helps and guides us. Continuously practicing unlearning makes it easier and quicker to make the shifts as your brain adapts to new models being created. And what better than a curious mind full of questions, willing to embrace the discomfort of change to begin the unlearning journey.