All Good Things Come to Those Who Unlearn

Welcome to the final issue of Hit and Miss

This is it! This is the last issue of our newsletter.

A little hard to imagine that now I will have free time for when I used to read about and plan the newsletter issues, and it is a habit I will be breaking.

But I can’t imagine any of this happening without any one of you, almost 150 people that put trust in my stupidity and my writing.

So, while we part ways (Inshallah, temporarily), in the last issue I want to talk about one of the most important skills I have learned. I want to leave you thinking about this skill and if there’s at least one thing you want to take back from Hit and Miss, I hope it’s this.

This issue is the lengthiest one.

Would you stay with me a little longer this time? :)

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From the moment we are born, even before stepping into a school, there’s one thing that is continuously happening with us – learning. We are constantly absorbing information from our environment and giving it context and meaning. As children, we learn through observation. It’s called ‘observational learning’. Being children, we have observed people in our homes and tried to mimic them. I remember playing with a kitchen set and emulating my mothers' actions. She is also a teacher, I remember her black bag that I would carry and write on the walls of our home with coloured chalk, pretending to teach.

Research suggests that children learn significantly in their formative years. They learn how to differentiate between sexes (man and woman) as young as three years old. They are always picking up new information and therefore by the time they enter formal schooling, they have already started to take shape – emotionally and cognitively. So, if you think – you have been learning all your life, irrespective of your schooling, internships, and job experiences.

Cut to - school: The teacher is giving a monologue from a Science textbook while you write the verbatim as fast as you can in your notebook. Schools are supposed to be this one place where we ‘learn’. We learn science, math, social studies, English (how to speak fluently in English with an accent), and the like. If you're as unlucky as me, you have had to do SUPW and make burp clothes for babies for your exam. (I did that, somehow passed).

While learning takes up a considerable amount of time in schooling, and even outside school, we do forget to teach one skill that seems imperative to have in the 21st century. Unlearning.

We aren’t sure that most of our knowledge is true. We come across many conflicting information, opinions, and knowledge in this world. And so, when you learn one version of an event it is most likely that you will not be able to understand another version that comes in a clash with the previous one. Let me give you an example. When I was younger, around 5 maybe 6, my mother would stop me from eating seeds with watermelon and said if I swallowed the seeds a tree would grow in my stomach. I made sure I never swallowed any seed thereafter. But when I grew up I was told that it wasn’t true. My dumb little mind could not rationalise how a tree could grow in someone’s stomach however, my mother did tell me it would so I had learned.

Long story short, now I don’t believe it. And it’s because I unlearned the previous information by my mother and replaced it with another one. Our lives are filled with examples of unlearning and learning, but maybe we don’t practice unlearning deliberately or rationally.

“Unlearning is not about forgetting. It's about the ability to choose an alternative mental model or paradigm. When we learn, we add new skills or knowledge to what we already know. When we unlearn, we step outside the mental model to choose a different one.”

-       Harvard Business Review

My example was perhaps a fairly simple one. Society sets multiple yardsticks for every person on how to live a good life, how to be a better child/parent/sibling etc. We learn these expectations and in a lot of cases, they are far away from our ideas of a good life or how we want to conduct ourselves. And it is this dichotomy that strays us away from unlearning.

“You must unlearn what you have been programmed to believe since birth. That software no longer serves you if you want to live in a world where all things are possible.”

-       Jacqueline E. Purcell

We live in a digital age where information is everywhere, what is more, important to learn is to filter this information, to unlearn our inherent biases, to unlearn our preconceived notions, and to make a wiggle room for better ideas and opinions.

Why it might be important to start unlearning?

1.     When you learn untrue and biased things, there is no room for critical thought and rationality. It keeps us in our comfort zones. But when you start to unlearn, your mind is freer to take in more knowledge, think more freely about what 'you feel rather than what society, media, or literature has made you feel.

2.     Learning might make you well-schooled, but couple that with unlearning, and there are better chances for you to become a well-educated person.

3.     You eventually start walking a path where you can take accountability for your thoughts and the ones that translate into action. For each decision you make, each new piece of information you consume and filter, you will be able to justify to yourself.

4.     You will move forward.

So how might you unlearn?

I have picked two points from an interesting article in Forbes on unlearning. They put into words my thoughts on the ways to unlearn.

1.     Unlearning is similar in some respects. I say we take the partner-with-the-smart-kid approach and get to learn the new stuff.

Here’s the simple, ingenious approach to safely transform your old learning or habit super quickly: Simply “flood” or overwhelm the old action with the newly desired action or habit!

2.     Rather than focus on the unlearning part, simply design the new action you would like to take its place. Take, for instance, replacing coffee with green tea.

With this approach of flooding your old routine with newly designed actions, the process of new learning overwhelms and makes extinct the old actions you wanted to unlearn. You simply get there faster by dwelling on which tea choice you make this morning. There is no focus at all on coffee.

-       FORBES

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

— Alvin Toffler

But why am I talking about unlearning so much in my last issue?

Almost all the information that I have gotten over the last few years through my education, reading, or from media has been a lot of unlearning. And while I still figure out the art of unlearning, this habit of trying to unlearn my biases, my false notions, my privilege has made me more rational.

Almost every issue of this newsletter is a result of unlearning obsolete and biased information and constantly trying to learn new ones. And I wish you also had a chance to unlearn some of your opinions and knowledge too.

And while we are all walking our paths to becoming better-learned people, I wish I could at least instil the thought of unlearning in your mind. I know that's too much to ask but I still hope. :)

While I leave you here, I am leaving you with fifteen topics that I have held close to my heart. Keep these emails with you. Read them at your convenience, write to me about your thoughts (I love reading what you write, I do. Please write more to me), and share them with the people around you.

I also want to take some more space and thank a few people who have been an important part of Hit and Miss.

The first and the most important one – My Mother and Pooja. Thank you for listening to all my ideas, even in the middle of the night and being the best critic and supporter. I can’t thank you enough for being my biggest cheerleaders for this newsletter.

Anchita, Keerthana, and Varsha for being amazing co-authors. You guys are extremely talented and I am honoured to have shared this space with you.

Raashi for agreeing to give me an interview and sharing your story, I have learned so much from you. Thank you for being so courageous and teaching me resilience.

And

Thank you for being an amazing reader, critique, and guide to me. I have enjoyed this journey, and I hope you have too.

-       Tanisha

P.S. I am going to keep writing and publishing on my blog and Instagram. If you wish to stay in touch, do connect with me on social media. :)