Learn to Unlearn

In my life, I have focused not just on learning but also on unlearning. We all absorb bad patterns and habits and even knowledge at some point in our lives, and it’s important to be aware that this happens so that we can overcome it.

Many of the things we learned were never worth learning. Or they were only worth learning so that we could realize that they were wrong and stop doing them.

Here are a few things I have unlearned in my life:

1.     Sudden Anger and Impatience

In my teenage years, I was generally calm. Still, I recall that if I became upset about something, I would sometimes get suddenly angry and impatient, not handling the situation well. And some of this extreme impatience carried on into my twenties as well.

By my mid-twenties, I realized that this was terribly maladaptive and that this was not helping me grow, and my behavior would only drive people out of my life. I realized that my loved ones did not deserve this from me, and usually, they were the ones who had to suffer through it.

Most of the time, I was fine – but I was fairly easily pushed to my limits back then, and I would sort of blow up in anger, making minor situations into something much bigger than they needed to be.

I unlearned this quickly when I had the realization that my wife (who was my girlfriend at that time) did not deserve to deal with this and that she probably would not deal with it for long. Eventually, it seemed clear that she would leave if I could not manage my behavior appropriately.

Strangely, unlearning this was easier than I thought. I’m sure it was a challenge at first, but I feel that in a matter of months, I made a sizeable change in my behavior. I was no longer blowing up over trivial matters. Over the years, I was able to become a great example of patience rather than impatience. I do not get angry very easily at all anymore. In fact, I think it takes much more for me to become angry than it would for most people.

2.     Intense Shyness

Through much of my childhood and young adulthood, I feel that I was intensely shy. Although never diagnosed, I may have had social phobia / social anxiety disorder. Sometimes the thought of being around new people would make me very anxious. Inside, all I wanted to do was avoid being around new and unfamiliar people.

If I knew there would be a lot of people around at a gathering or party, I sometimes would feel physically unwell from the anxiety.

Even for the people I knew, if I didn’t know them very well, I often felt uncomfortable. And even for the people I was more familiar with, I sometimes felt anxious and uncertain about how to handle a social situation.

What helped me unlearn this intense shyness / social anxiety was realizing that there was no single right way to handle a social situation. I often felt that I had failed to properly socialize with people, which made me want to avoid these situations more and more. But when I realized there was no one right way to do things, it became easier.

Of course, it was also an important shift when I realized that I had a real problem. I was actually scared and overly worried about talking to someone new. This was an irrational fear that I could be rejected, misunderstood, that I would be disliked, or perhaps even made fun of if people thought my social skills were not good enough.

To unlearn my bad patterns, I began to make it a point to interact with as many people as I could. If I were invited to something, I would go even if I had to fight my own instincts to avoid it. I made an effort to speak to new people, although I’m sure many people would have easily spotted me as an extreme introvert. They probably could not have known that merely showing up to a place with people could take some effort from me.

In time, I found it easier to engage in conversations, let go a bit, and enjoy conversations with new people. I no longer had to analyze whether my social skills were good enough. I realized that the less I thought and worried about my social skills, the better things went.

Eventually, I lost most of the anxiety. I can still get a bit of anxiety if I meet a group of new people, but I think it is normal and mild. It is nothing like the outright fear that I used to have.

3.     Responding By Feeling Depressed or Hopeless

I’m not sure when I began feeling depressed if things would not go my way. It was probably connected to feeling like a failure socially. But in my late teens / early twenties, if I didn’t perform as well as I hoped on an assignment or test, I may get depressed about it. At some point, I may have gotten used to being in a depression, and I didn’t really work to get the things I wanted out of life. I accepted it for what it was, which is a horrible way to deal with it.

Then when I began graduate school and faced the biggest challenges of my life, I became deeply depressed. My natural response to challenges and obstacles was to feel depressed, and so it made sense that I would get deeply depressed then.

To overcome this took therapy and medication for a couple of years. Then I meditated to help keep control of my mind. I also decided always to take action to make things better rather than to allow my thinking to drift deeper and deeper into depressive loops.

I’m not sure that depression is always something that can be unlearned, as everyone is different. In my case, I was fortunate that through my own will to change, I was able to unlearn this habit. My habit had become that when something didn’t go my way, I got depressed. So it was critically important that I develop a better response to such challenges in my life.

Unlearning my depressive habits was something that took years. My therapist at that time stated it perfectly to me once – she said: “You have spent a long time with certain issues, and it can take time to work your way out of them and to heal them.” Similarly, as with the prior examples, I feel that I am quite resilient at this point, and I do not fall into a depressive mood or state very easily.

What is Worth Unlearning in Your Life?

In revealing the above things I unlearned, I see that a common theme is I wanted my freedom. I was trapped by my anger, shyness, and depression. And in time, I was able to unlearn those behaviors and to live my life more freely. I didn’t need to respond to the world by withdrawing from it. Instead, I could participate in it and enjoy it.

Is there something in your life that is holding you back that you would like to unlearn? Often we focus on learning new things, but it is just as worthwhile to unlearn the bad habits and thought processes that are preventing us from leading the life we truly want to live.

Surely everyone’s problems and paths to overcome them will be different. But in my life, usually, I noticed that there was a big problem holding me back. Then I realized that this was important enough that I needed to work on it. There was a point where it was no longer a question – to meet my life goals and live the way I wanted to, I would need to dedicate myself to overcome certain issues. The particular steps you take from there may be different, but eventually, you will find your way to better if you are committed.

Is It Worth Reading if It Isn’t Tweet-Worthy?

The other day I had a thought that could apply to many of us:

Most people started off reading books, made their way to articles, and ended up at tweets and headlines.

Is this how the devolution of human thought begins?

Before you think I am accusing you of anything, I can admit that to some extent I have gotten into this pattern myself. I still read books, but I do find myself scrolling through headlines to get the gist of what is goinkg on. Partly, this is due to the fact that so many apps encourage this. Facebook, Twitter, Google News, Reddit (and probably loads of other apps and social media) are all organized as never-ending feeds.

You can scroll down to your heart’s content, and never reach the end. This is a bottomless well of information and entertainment. Rather than needing to click or select anything, you can keep scrolling down. It’s comforting, like a friend who is always there for you.

You may not even feel the need to actually read the articles, as the headlines may tell you all that you felt you needed to know. You can feel like you know so much, while actually knowing so little. You get dopamine bursts as you continue to scroll down, learning more and more, about less and less.

When it comes to these apps, tomorrow’s posts will probably contradict today’s posts, but tomorrow is another day, and so we are not worried about that for now. Even if there is no contradiction, tomorrow’s posts will continue along a path with many twists and turns, as if a never-ending soap opera. Since the drama is never-ending, there is no need to really dig deep. You can ride along the surface, scrolling down mindlessly, endlessly, in a loop, day after day.

When someone asks what you’re doing. There Is no longer a need to say that you are on a particular app, as they mostly function in the same way.

When they ask what you are up to, you can respond:

“I’m just scrolling.”

f you are about to scroll, and you haven’t yet begun, you might say:

“I’m going for a scroll.”

I admit maybe I’m being alarmist (and facetious), but sometimes I wonder if we are scrolling our minds away.

When I lived in Paris, I recall crossing a crowded street with pedestrians, and most people had their phones out. Loads of people proceeded to bump into each other like bumper cars, not saying anything, not acknowledging what had just happened. They kept moving along, kept staring down at their phones. Were they on GPS? To cross the street – seems dubious. Were some of them scrolling? Probably. (In defense of the French, many of these people were probably tourists – and of course, this could happen anywhere.)

Often when I am on Facebook, someone may post an article, and then there is a flood of comments, outraged at the premise of the article. Inevitably, multiple people comment that no one actually read the article. The article apparently did not state what people thought it would claim. People have gotten angry, outraged, attacked the author’s competence, sometimes even taking the dramatic action of “unfriending” some of their long-time “friends” over a petty disagreement about this article, all the while not having actually read the article.

Many of us don’t want to take the time to read and learn. We want to form an opinion and spread it, even if this is just based on a headline’s worth of information.

And we now know headlines are designed to get you to click.

Then if you manage to click, most of us expect a list (e.g., 5 Steps to…) or some quick way to scan the material.

This could make sense to make the reading process more efficient – but it seems like scanning has become a way of life. Sometimes I am having a conversation with someone, and it looks like they are scanning for something better to come their way. Similarly with reading, if we can’t absorb the material in seconds, we become impatient. Rather than us needing to work harder to understand, we tend to blame the material as not being Tweet-worthy enough. Are we at the point of needing catchy headlines and convenient bullet lists, otherwise we can’t read and understand? If so, this is quite the devolution in our comprehension abilities.

Just yesterday, I had a dream or a vision. I thought – What if people read? What if they didn’t keep scrolling? What if they not only read but what if they actually found something worth reading? What if they actually desired to learn and understand first instead of wanting to spread their ill-formed and baseless opinions?

And then I woke up, and instead of dreaming, I decided to write this post.

5 Steps to Reading Insightfully:

1.     Learn to read

We all think we know how to read, but maybe we don’t. Maybe we are stuck at reading in a basic way, not reading or thinking critically. Whatever you are used to reading, seek out material that challenges you more deeply to improve your reading skills, learn more, and deepen your understanding.

2.     Read to learn

Reading is one of the best ways to learn. You will exercise your thinking, logic, imagination, questioning, and problem-solving, all while learning new things. We can read for fun, but we should also read some books to learn.

3.     Learn to understand

When you learn, you will come to an understanding of life and the world. You will start to see and perceive more fully, more deeply. We shouldn’t learn to accumulate random facts but instead, aim to focus on facts that help us understand.

4.     Understand to form useful opinions

As you understand things on a deeper level, you will begin forming novel and useful opinions and think more critically. People may even start to come to you to see what you think about a topic. These useful opinions are your reward for having read and learned deeply. Many of us want to believe that our opinions are useful, but this isn't easy to accomplish without meeting the prior steps.

5.     Form useful opinions to enact meaningful change

Work on developing opinions that can help to change things for the better. This can be done in virtually any field, but in general, the idea is to help solve problems and help humanity, life, or the world somehow. At this stage, you are not the only one rewarded, but society itself is also gaining from your deep reading and thinking abilities.

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If you would like a guide to better reading, you may be interested in reading one of my books - The Insightful Reader: How to Learn Deeply & Attain Life-Changing Insights from Books

Seek Practical Knowledge

Reflecting on some of what I learned in school, I feel that often the material was either not practical, or the case was not made for how the information could be used practically.

If we examine aboriginal societies, I can only imagine that they would laugh in amusement at any ideas that would not be concrete and immediately applicable. Their societies are concerned with daily survival and needs, so it would probably be seen as a waste of time to speculate on ideas that are not easily testable or which cannot be applied for some benefit.

Aboriginal societies may be guided by the actual stars in the sky yet likely be unaware of their chemical composition. A schooled adult from the West, however, is much more likely to know that stars are mostly made up of hydrogen yet have no understanding of how to navigate using the night sky.

I enjoy the world of ideas and abstractions, but perhaps we need to focus on the information we can use more practically.

Practical knowledge can help with many different aspects of life, such as survival, developing useful skills, achieving more of a big picture understanding, finding meaning in what we learn, and developing an understanding of how to approach a variety of problems.

Surely more themes could fall under the umbrella of practical knowledge, as the key point is that this is information that you can use to help yourself or to help those around you. The understanding is not simply theoretical but applicable. And of course, practical knowledge should be shown to work through experience – if it does not work as expected, it is ultimately not practical.

In school, many topics are split up – such as science, reading, math, etc. But in real life, you may face problems daily which intertwine with a variety of topics. It can make sense to learn some of these topics independently in school to master them. But when we face real-life problems which are more complex, we may find that we lack awareness on how to approach them.

School is meant to prepare us for life or at least work, but both domains involve practical and applied situations for most people.

Growing up, my father often made comments about “common sense” – he would say that people don’t have it anymore. I suspect it’s not something that was ever taught. Likely it was a way of thinking and learning that people needed to succeed at home, life, and work – especially as my father grew up in Mexico in the 1950s (and his young adulthood was spent in the US in the 60s).

Basically, it seems that in a prior era, people learned how to deal with a variety of life problems - and this type of skill has largely been lost. We are now highly specialized. For the most part, people are satisfied with only knowing how to do one job (or how to operate within one main field). But in the past, people needed common sense to be more self-reliant - small communities could figure out typical problems on their own without needing to call a specialist.

To me, Common Sense and Practical Knowledge essentially mean the same thing.

Keep in mind that if we go to school and learn how to deal with artificially constructed “book” problems, then that does not necessarily mean we will be ready to tackle real-world problems.

As a basic example, with a book problem, the resources are irrelevant. Yet, in real life, resources are fundamental. For example, if I know that I need a screwdriver to construct a piece of furniture, then if I don’t have that screwdriver, I must acquire one, or at least consider alternative resources I could use. With a book problem, it is usually assumed that the resources do not matter or that you have all the resources you need to solve the problem. Also, perfect circumstances are generally assumed for book problems, but in real life, while you’re working on one problem, new and sometimes bigger problems develop. And you must react in real-time or risk causing even bigger problems.

When I was growing up, my father sometimes asked me about the simplest of life problems. His tests were not theoretical. They would involve an actual problem right in front of us, something in the house or the backyard, or that involved some piece of equipment not working properly, perhaps.

Inevitably, I would not have a clue as to how to resolve the problem.

Then he would show me a simple solution that had not occurred to me. The problem wasn’t really that I didn’t know the answer – but that perhaps a schooled child or young adult should have built a framework for dealing with unexpected problems. Yet, this way of thinking or “common sense” seemed to be lacking.

What is the value of only knowing how to solve clearly explained problems in one specific domain? Real-life does not work that way. Often, there is a problem, and no one has properly defined it. So we must define it for ourselves. To me, that is a simple skill that was never taught. Perhaps it can’t be taught – but somehow, I doubt that.

Any time someone has said that something could not be taught, instructors or academics ended up designing training programs that showed you could probably teach anything. Likely, people become convinced that something cannot be taught when the domain has not been properly articulated – through research, books, or training programs. Imagine trying to learn about body language in a time before anyone had actually explicitly identified the main patterns of body language in humans. Having to teach yourself is much different than being able to learn from someone who knows.

Perhaps some students do well when learning about artificial problems, but others could learn much better by examining real-life problems. The problems could have already been solved by others but which the students have never solved for themselves. If it’s a new and practical problem for the student, that is all that matters.

As a basic example, some students may prefer to learn math and physics by playing with clocks or machinery. This would be more interesting, engaging, and practical than working on book problems.

If a teacher is reading, I am sure you may think that you did make it a point to tell your students how your topic applied to the real world. However, sometimes this is not enough. Students who are learning may need to directly apply their knowledge to the real world for it to have meaning.

A variety of studies show that students forget most of what they learn. Perhaps what people learn should have personal meaning to them. And for it to have personal meaning, perhaps it should be practical and applicable knowledge.

However, I understand why teachers and the educational system in general stick to book problems. It is more practical for them – as they can cover more topics in less time and not have to add resources to the budget.

Sometimes my book learning has even interfered with my understanding of something in the real world. This has been a recurrent mantra in my life, where I have received messages like this: “What you learned in school won’t help you here,” or “What you learned in school was wrong. Actually, it works like this….”

Of course, there is no reason we must choose between school and seeking practical knowledge. Perhaps we go to school to learn how to deal with “book problems,” but then we need to spend some of our own time gaining practical knowledge outside of school. The best way to do this is probably to learn from people who have acquired a lot of practical knowledge themselves.

Sometimes we view practical problems to be at a lower level, but this is a mistake. If you spend enough time in school, college, or graduate school (as I have), practical problems are often cast aside as being irrelevant. Today, if a practical problem arises, or if you see someone working on one - take some interest and see if you can learn something new.

The Pursuit of Higher Understanding

Pursuing information and knowledge is good, but pursuing wisdom and understanding is better. The world we live in is overflowing with information. More and more websites, books, music, social media posts, shows, and so forth are being pumped out into the world day by day to absurd levels where we cannot keep up with it all. Even keeping up with one medium is quite difficult. There are too many books to read, too many shows to watch, and too much music to listen to.

Foolishly, many of us do aim to keep up with it. We feel that if we don't know some piece of information, then we will be left behind. At this point in human history, we have data that, to some extent, are immortal and indestructible. As with the cloud and internet, the data may live on forever. At the same time, the data is quite mortal because every time something new comes out, only moments later hundreds, or thousands, or more even newer and fresh productions are released, pushing the recently created ones out of our reach and out of our minds, deeper into our collective forgotten histories.

In this sense, Twitter seems to be a metaphor for our relationships with information. What is new becomes old almost immediately, goes out of reach, and then is forgotten. We are forever grasping for the new, but the new instantly becomes old. So our information and ideas always appear to be outdated.

Many of us are shouting louder and louder to bring attention to what we are doing, while people care less and less because there is so much new stuff out there all of the time. There are more and more bits of information floating around for us all to see and access, but most people lack direction and purpose for what we are supposed to do with this information. We mostly ignore the information, or it paralyzes us with fear, or we are perpetually talking about what is new and following the fads and trivializing this life. Still, either way, the information is either worthless or not properly utilized. We are silly in that we value this information so much that we are always chasing it.

For what? Knowledge without know-how is what? Awareness without action is what? Data without direction is what?

Ignorance. Futility. Emptiness.

We are hyper-connected and disconnected at the same time. We are so into our devices, always connected to the digital world but lost from the real world in front of us. The real world has become a mirage that seems less real than the digital world that we prefer to inhabit. That digital world makes us feel useful because we are addicted to information. We must know what new recipe our neighbor is trying out to impress her mother-in-law. We must know which asteroid is almost coming to hit the planet and end it all. We must know which major attack happened without cause. It just happened. We must know these things and yet can do nothing about them but grow more and more upset and discontent with this limited life we have.

The information is limitless, but we are limited in our time. We limit ourselves by focusing on the information itself as something to be valued, rather than what we will do with that information to make improvements. We must value true wisdom and understanding over the 0s and 1s of data and information. Wisdom and understanding transcend the information before it and will help us to rise and do something greater in this world.

How do we pursue wisdom and understanding? Daydream, write down our thoughts, start conversations with and listen to our elders, distance ourselves from the frenetic pace of modern life where everything must be done right away. We must be in a hurry and busy and worried, or we are not normal, and something is wrong with us. Be artistic, observe nature, people-watch, meditate, read from enlightened souls and classical works, and not just the new fad.

It is important that we not pursue trivial and temporary factoids and instead pursue practical knowledge that can have a true impact on our thoughts and actions. If we pursue enough of this kind of knowledge, it will lead to higher levels of wisdom and understanding.