We must regularly look for areas to unlearn, relearn, and breakthrough.
Unlearning is the process of letting go, reframing, and moving away from once-useful mindsets and acquired behaviors that were effective in the past, but now limit success.
Unlearning is not about forgetting or discarding your knowledge—it’s the conscious act of letting go of outdated information and making space new ideas to inform your decision-making and actions.
Relearning means using that new information to take new, uncomfortable steps that will help you get the breakthroughs you’re looking for.
I believe that facing these challenging circumstances is when most of our growth happens. But you have to have the humility to recognize when your existing behavior and thinking is stalling your growth—when it’s time to unlearn.
How to Start Unlearning
The simple answer is to start with yourself—notice the areas where you’re struggling or feeling uncertain in your life or work.
We all know that product features have to be continuously updated and innovated to stay relevant in the market. It’s the same for us humans—we have to update our perceptions, our knowledge, and our behavior to stay relevant in our market.
Identifying What You Need to Unlearn
We’ve all been going through major changes, the likes of which we’ve never experienced before. Maybe it’s a change in how you personally work, or something as large as your strategy to keep your business alive.
Whatever your situation, if you sense it’s time for self-assessment or you might need to switch it up, ask yourself these questions:
- Where have you not been living up to the expectations you have for yourself or achieving the outcomes you’re aiming for?
- What situations are you struggling with or avoiding?
- Where have you tried everything you can think of to solve a problem, but you’re still not getting the breakthrough you’re looking for?
The answers to these questions can provide important signals for what you need to unlearn.
I regularly find that the best unlearners are people that cultivate certain characteristics within themselves that allow them to continuously adapt to changing circumstances.
Although there are many such characteristics that help the process, I believe there are really just five that make the biggest difference: curiosity, ownership, commitment, comfort with discomfort, and creating safety.
1. Curiosity
2. Commitment - Unlearning requires commitment, because you’re going to have to do things that you’re not good at and tackle more and more difficult tasks to truly unlearn.
3. Ownership - When you don’t get the results you’re aiming for, what’s your usual response? People who are great unlearners own the results. Because they come from a place of truth rather than ego, they want the real information to make better decisions—not to cast blame on others.
4. Comfort with Being Uncomfortable - Discomfort comes with the territory. Great unlearners consciously go outside their comfort zone and find their edges with excellence to adapt and improve. It’s not always pleasant to go through the unlearning process, but those who persevere are far more likely to succeed and reach the payoff they’re after.
5. Creating Safety - Start small and focus on yourself. Create safety by taking small steps, safe-to-fail experiments and creating fast feedback loops. That way you can learn what works and what doesn’t as you try new behaviors to grow your capabilities.
Barry O'Reilly, excerpt from:
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