Unlearning is the Highest Form of Learning
The 13th century Persian poet, scholar, theologian and mystic, Rumi is attributed to saying.
“Unlearning is the Higher Form of Learning”
Fast forward a bit to American businessman, writer and futurist, Alvin Toffler, who is quoted as saying “The illiterate of the 21st Century are not those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”
Know the Difference Between true and Truth.
One of the foundational principles of my coaching practice is Truth exists regardless of belief or consensus. If everyone in the world still believed the world was flat, would it be?
Some things are Truth whether we believe them or not.
It is a healthy practice to question everything. It is never a good idea to believe anything on first exposure, and most importantly, never believe anything you think about yourself that limits you.
In terms of your reality, Truth is who you really are, true is who you think you are.
In his book, The Four Agreements”, Don Miguel Ruiz addresses how limiting beliefs are formed in us as children, through a process he refers to as “the domestication of humans”.
“Children believe everything adults say. We agree with them, and our faith is so strong that the belief system controls our whole dream of life. We didn’t choose those beliefs, and we may have rebelled against them, but we are not strong enough to win the rebellion. The result is to surrender to the beliefs of our agreement.”
Limiting Beliefs
Limiting Beliefs are generalizations, stereotypes, or ideas that we learned and ultimately accepted about ourselves, the world around us, or others. These beliefs ultimately limit us in some significant way.
My job as a coach is to help you explore what beliefs are no longer serving you.
Challenging someone’s beliefs, (whether the person ultimately believes those thoughts or not), can be tenuous. It is important for me to be curious, respectful, un-opinionated and non-judgmental. We might explore the following questions.
How true is that belief for you… really?
How might it limit you?
Where did you learn that?
What evidence do you have to support that?
How would your life be different if you believed something else…?
Gender Socialization
When and where I grew up, in general, boys were taught to value and lead with certain traits and to never display the others. Girls were socialized to do the same, but with different sets of traits.
A traditional, patriarchal form of raising children, dominant in the U.S. for decades, boys were nurtured by their caretaker (usually their mother) until four or five years old. At that point they were brought over to the “male-perspective” and many young boys, brutally shamed by their father or peers for any expression of weakness or any emotions other than aggressiveness and anger. In other words, anything considered feminine.
This pattern leaves many men with being so thoroughly cut off from their emotions they don’t have words to describe them. Men became dominated by the rational, aggressive, competitive, never-let- ‘em-see-you-sweat behaviors that work on the sports field, or in the business world and determined to never allow themselves to be hurt or humiliated.
Since then, the traditional ways of being men and women have been challenged, creating confusing contradictions for everyone. Now men are expected to be strong and high achieving as well as emotionally intelligent. This makes certain aspects of personal relationships even more difficult. Men are expected to be in touch with and open with their feelings as well as nurturing of their partners feelings. In this way, men are faced with an unlearning of their entrenched limited beliefs. Suddenly, they are expected to access the very same vulnerable, sensitive, and caring parts that they spent their lives trying to keep locked away. To further confuse things, they need to remain close to striving and achieving. The behaviors most men were raised on – rational, impatient, action-oriented, problem solvers are no longer welcome.
It is understandable why so many men have shut down. They can feel humiliated by their failures in the display of emotional intelligence and humiliation is something they swore would never happen to them again.
Re-wiring your Brain.
In many ways, our brains are a product of our past. It is a living record of everything you have experienced up until this moment. Learning, as we understand it, is the formation of a network of neurons in our brains related to a specific task or experience. If we repeat a particular task or experience enough times, our brains begin to run on “auto-pilot”. But not only do experiences build these networks, but they also create emotions that are chemically “linked”. Dr. Joe Dispenza, refers to this as “chemical residue from past experiences – chemical feedback.” The stronger the connection between experience and emotion, the stronger its residual impacts on our behaviors, particularly those that have become “higher-level” (i.e., unconscious).
So, when we discuss changing behaviors based on limiting beliefs, we are literally setting out to re-wire your brain (neurologically speaking).
The change process will involve creating new neuro pathways based on the new thoughts and behaviors that better serve you.
When a traumatic, or near traumatic event occurs, the chemicals, Cortisol and Adrenaline are introduced into our system to help us survive. Those chemicals were incredibly helpful when we needed to run from a predator and decide whether to fight, run, or hide. In today’s world, that response can be triggered by a phone call, an email, a text message. Strong emotions such as anger, frustration, fear, anxiety, sadness, guilt, suffering, or shame can cause the same primitive response. It has been shown these chemicals stay in our bodies for up to 36 hours. If we experience just one triggering event each day, we are living in chronic stress. One of the ways the body protects itself during fight-or-flight is to send energy to our extremities, our vision narrows, and our ability to develop new neuropathways is severely constrained.
Something to remember:
Our bodies cannot distinguish between the physical experience and reliving that experience in our mind.
This is why negative thoughts can be so destructive. If we ruminate on them enough in our minds, they tend to become a reality. Therefore, one of the keys to sustained desired change is a positive reframe. We’ll examine this more in the future blog.
Many of us have been taught things as children that are simply not true, or no longer serve us. Additionally, traumatic, or impactful events can change the way we see ourselves. When this occurs, we severely limit our ability to see the world, our ourselves clearly. It’s analogous to trying to see ourselves while looking into a dirty mirror. The job of a coach is to help you wipe away the “dust” and “dirt” so you can see things as they are. Your TRUTH