Message of the Day - Learning through unlearning

Good Morning,

 

My current read is ‘The Heart of Leadership’ by Elizabeth Jeffries (http://www.amazon.com/The-Heart-Leadership-Influencing-Encourage/dp/0787220000). The book focuses on all aspects of leadership from what leaders need to do, need to be, need to understand and how to do each of these. The book is full of case studies and tools to use and questions to ask yourself to help evaluate your current level of skill in leadership.

 

One section of the book which caught my attention was on unlearning in order to learn. That as we go through life, we often will learn from multiple different avenues. We learn by reading, by watching television or the internet, by listening to and watching others and even by osmosis, just being in an environment can give us information.

 

Unfortunately, not all that we learn is accurate information, or even useful information. Worse yet is some of the information we learn can even be harmful to us or others. Just think about watching an video about some first aid procedure that goes viral, but is missing a few key steps, what kind of damage could that cause?

 

The good news is that as we live and grow every day, we can continue to learn new materials and overwrite the wrong or outdated material.

 

In effect we can unlearn what we have learned and replace it with new and better information.

 

One challenge to this is when we brush off the new information ‘because we already know this’ not realizing what we know is not accurate or current information.

 

So it pays to be open to learning new things even if it is something we learning a long time ago.

 

Then again, in our technologically driven world, what information stays the same decade over decade, much less year over year?

 

Things we learned a few years ago, and sometimes a few months ago will become outdated.

 

The rate of this change is increasing, so it makes even more sense to be learn how to unlearn by being open to learning more of what we think we already know.

 

Confusing huh?

 

In the end, we need to keep an open mind and keep on learning, and that confusing cycle above will flow naturally. You will know it is working by the ‘aha’ moments you have as you learn something knew or find out something you once thought to be true was wrong.

 

And it all comes down to learning and growing daily.  Funny how that works.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net
http://www.berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
Follow Me on Twitter! http://twitter.com/sberenberg

 

http://learnandgrowdaily.com  Click here to order: "Learn And Grow Daily!"

502-533-9336