What are some things you want to learn in life? How about things you need to learn? How excited are you at the prospects of either? Now, what about things you want to unlearn, whether stopping or changing to do, think, or believe? And things you need to unlearn? Were answers for things to unlearn as obvious as things to learn? Are you as excited about things to unlearn as things to learn?

Learning is often on our mind, whether consciously or subconsciously, with the latter being intuitive where we don’t need to articulate it and just do it. Many also love to learn, with almost everyone loving to learn at least some of the time, pending what was to be learned. Meanwhile, unlearning requires conscious effort because it’s about breaking habits, beliefs, default thinking modes, and other things with which we have gotten comfortable and are reluctant to let go, even when we know better. It requires stepping out of our comfort zone in ways we don’t want to, starting with admitting we were currently doing and/or thinking incorrectly, or at least not for our own best interests. That stoppage or change from our norm is more than just that, though, being an unlearning so the new actions or modes of thinking become natural to help us decrease odds of relapse. Being creatures of habit and belief, unlearning is neither easy nor desirable to do naturally. In fact, if unlearning weren’t often learning of something else to take its place, I would universally state unlearning is harder to do than learning. This lack of ease and motivation can be so challenging to unlearning that have a life philosophy to develop your unlearning skills as much as your learning skills, if not even more so.

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This post is one of 70 quotes I wrote, each with an accompanying essay, in my e-book and paperback Stars I Put in my Sky to Live By, on Amazon or Smashwords (choose your price including free!).