Learning to Unlearn
Personal development isn’t all about addition e.g., reading a self-help book or going on another course. It’s also about subtraction. It’s about removing all the ‘stuff’ or ‘baggage’ you have accumulated over your life that is no longer serving you.
Unlearning is often an overlooked aspect of personal development. The process of unlearning makes space for new ideas and makes us more adaptable by moving beyond “the way things have always been done.” However, unlearning is actually much more challenging than learning - letting go off outdated or limiting beliefs, habits, negative patterns of thinking etc.
Consider the following questions:
What do you need to unlearn? Make a list. Examples: people-pleasing, social comparison, perfectionism etc.
Why do you want to unlearn this?
Michelangelo described sculpting as a process whereby the artist released a hidden figure from the block of stone in which it slumbered. The metaphor of chipping away at a block of stone to reveal the ‘ideal form’. Chiseling is unlearning. This is the hard, slow, sometimes painful work. Polishing is about refinement.
In the end, you’re not building from scratch. You’re unveiling. The art is knowing what to keep, what to let go of, and what to add — until what stands before you feels honest and whole.
Your best self already exists within you!
