Learning to Unlearn

Yes, it can be useful sometimes.

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A friend of mine once told me that… some things were better if left unseen, if left unlearned. That friend might have a point. For us to treasure each moment, each day, for us to focus our time on the things that matter, and not only that, for us to craft something greater with our judgment, with our knowledge, we might need to unlearn some things.

We want to know everything. Everything. We start changing our viewing angle, playing with possibilities, asking what “the right way” would look like, and we even start creating steps to achieve our truth about any thought we might want to approach.

When we finally get a result that pleases us, we can assure we know something, we learned a way to decipher some grand truth. And the more we continue down this road, the more we find ourselves lock down on deeper and deeper cells of our crafted entitlement and biases.

All of a sudden, learning isn´t a strength, it becomes a simple reaction to some stimuli in our environment. We think every situation can have the same outcomes; therefore, they need a given income. We make a specific reasoning a must: any other approach will just not work because it has already been taken and was proven to fail.

This is just one of the biases we confront. The other is trying to know things that are better left unknown. Things that are no longer for us to be deciphered, or even perceived. These two realities, mastery and certainty are the enemies of our mental peace, for our development.

In Tom Hanks´s most recent movie, “A man called Otto”, where he plays the main character of the story, Otto, we can appreciate the lessons this character has to acquire, and how for doing so, he needs to unlearn them. For instance, he unlearns how to live, how to be perfectly imperfect, how to love, and what it means.

That didn't only help him to redefine his meaning, his living. It transforms his community and his legacy. “A man called Otto”, is a movie where we can discover how tiny our perspective of the whole world will ever be, and this is beautiful. (I encourage you to go and see the movie in cinemas while you still can, it is a gem of reflection)

“You never read the same book twice”, a phrase Ryan Holiday, a well-known philosopher and author, says all of the time. It´s the same with life; you don´t find the same meaning -in joy, love, aspiration, or any other concept you can think of; every single time! You find amusement in every unique meaning you craft.

Unlearning doesn´t mean forgetting what has been, what is “real” for us, it doesn´t mean thinking outside the box every single time. No. Unlearning is thinking with and for the box. Is not only erasing it, it´s contemplating it, its full capabilities, its problems, its learned process. And then let it reframe not just your own information, but your approach to it, because it´s not unlearning for the sake of learning, it´s unlearning for the sake of spreading, learning a new way, learning a lesson that hadn´t been there, learning anything covered for us is a result of unfocalized unlearning.

So, are you ready to step back and “learn” some new things this week? Would love to hear you.

The Weekly Update

• 💯 Keep Productive - Upnote for Notes (looking for a minimal notetaking app out there? Check this out)

• 🖊️ Ronen Hayempour on Twitter - Don´t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.

• 💡 Lesson: skills without virtues are worthless, as the virtues are the ones carrying you.

• 🎙️ Thinking about starting a podcast, would you be interested? (Let me know)

The Lonely Reflection

Our goals are like ladders, and sometimes we just plan and construct the top part, forgetting about the first steps that can take us there. Remember: think big, act small, be persistent, and you´ll inevitably see results.

Thanks for tuning in. Let´s make this time a great one.

See you on the next life brew,

Stay happy. 💭