Your Ability To Learn, Unlearn, And Relearn: Pathway To Growth

In this era, among the most powerful tool that anyone can acquire is the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn. What you have to understand is that the world is very dynamic, and so also should knowledge be. Just to let you know; there are some things that you knew from the past which have lost relevance in this era. This is the reason why you have to update with your knowledge, so that you will flow with the trend and stay relevant. In order to grow and succeed in this era, then you need to be able to adapt, evolve, and adjust as it relates to knowledge. What you know may just be the difference between succeeding and not.

Learning is recognized as a natural instinct, and of course, a very fundamental step. Right from being born, up till now, there are mang stages of learning that you have undergone - from learning to walk, learning to speak, etc. But when you got older, you discovered that learning is not just for the purpose of just living, but to also create impact, which is where learning of skills, adapting, evolving comes into place. It is also worth noting that learning does not begin and end in school as some people may think. After all, how many hours do you spend in the school? After that, what happens? From your interactions with people, on a personal basis, from experiences, etc, there are lots of things to be learnt. The truth is that there are lots of things that I have learnt that were not taught me in school.

There is also something very important for you to know: sometimes, just learning new things may not be enough to make you to succeed and to grow, there is a need for you to let go of old, obsolete, irrelevant, and outdated knowledge - that is to unlearn. There are some levels of growth that you may not see until you have unlearned what is limiting your growth. For example; before the Covid lockdown era, a lot of people, even teachers, believed that the only effective way of teaching is through the conventional face-to-face method. But during the lockdown period, there was a switch to a lot of online and virtual platforms like zoom, Google Classroom, etc. Imagine if a teacher still held on to the belief of the face-to-face method without letting it go, they would have missed out of the process of learning during the lockdown period.

Just to let you know; unlearning is not as easy and simple as it sounds. You need to have a high level of humility - the humility to know that what you have known for long is no longer worthwhile or it has lost its correctness, and as such, you need to let go of it. In addition, you also need to move out from your comfort zone and then embrace things and the world from a whole new perspective. Just like the virtual learning method I cited earlier, the teacher has to look beyond them to come up with some e-learning platforms to assist them during the lockdown period. Then you need to also be a risk taker. It takes a considerable amount of risk for one to let go of what they used to know and to pursue new knowledge.

In addition to unlearning, another important factor to note is relearning. There may be something you know how to do, but there may also be ways to do it better and easier. It is not that you need to totally forgo the knowledge, but you need to sharpen it, enhance it, refine it, and make it more efficient and effective. You need to refine what you know, update your skills, and become better. If you keep doing the same thing with the old method, you may not get an improved result. For example; you may know how to type fast because you have used the manual typewriter. The skill will also be necessary when typing with a computer system. But beyond that, you can go a step further by learning coding. This is what relearning talks about. You have to understand that as the world is dynamic, so also should knowledge and learning be dynamic.

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