Unlearning

Tao has his days and nights mixed up. The theory is that while in the womb, Lisa walking around during the day rocks him to sleep. And at night, the stillness and quiet wakes him up. He did kick the most in the quiet hours.

Now that he is with us, he spends most of the day sleeping and a majority of the night fussing. Visitors come over and rave about how peaceful he is. Lisa and I look at each other and smirk, quietly knowing what they don’t. That at night, our little angel becomes a milk monster.

“It just takes some time for him to unlearn those patterns,” the doctor tells us in our check in.

As a learning designer, I dig deeper. “What can we be doing to signal this change for him? How can we help him with this transition?”

“Try taking a walk in the morning and a bath at night,” the doctor suggests.

We often talk about what we need to learn and do to achieve our goals. It’s less common that we talk about what we need to unlearn or stop doing. In my experience, those conversations only come up when a habit, idea, or way of doing something becomes detrimental to us. In this sense, we see unlearning as a last resort and not a first step in the learning process.

Tao is reminding me that learning is as much about letting go as it is about taking in.

If you want to learn to be better at saying no at work, you have to let go of the desire to always please people. If you want to become a better public speaker, you have to unlearn the verbal crutches (the “umm”s and the “like”s) that you use to fill silence. If you want to learn a new language, you have to let go of the desire to look smart. That’s why children are so quick to learn a language. They aren’t worried about what people think of them when they begin repeating sounds.

When working towards a goal, be as intentional about what you need to unlearn as what you need to learn. Keep an eye out for a tendency to avoid doing the difficult thing. Most of the time, we would rather find ways around unlearning and letting go, because even our unhealthy habits provide comfort. Change is scary but if it’s what you are working towards you don’t have to wait for time to facilitate your unlearning. Create healthy cues that you can integrate into your daily routine. For Tao, it’s a walk in the morning. For you, it might be filling up your water cup anytime you feel an urge. Understand that while avoiding unlearning might feel safer in the moment, there’s a good chance doing so is standing in the way of you achieving your goals. And if it’s not healthy and productive for you, there’s a good chance you are keeping mommy and daddy up at night, metaphorically speaking.