Unlearning is Underrated.
I used to have immense trouble with flirting, saying ‘No’, and “self-acceptance”—and now I don’t. The anxiety evaporated. I didn’t “learn how to flirt”, I didn’t “expose myself to more conflict”, and I didn’t “practice self-acceptance”. Instead, I unlearned my insecurity.
There are two broad strategies for dealing with insecurity: The first is learning a bunch of techniques to subdue its symptoms every time they arise; The second is unlearning the insecurity so it triggers vanishingly less often.
They’re the two ways to grow: Learning and Unlearning. adding and subtracting:
Learning is acquiring new skills: “learn” to flirt, “learn” to say ‘No’, “learn” to self-accept… It’s adding code to your mind.
Unlearning is removing harmful skills: deleting romantic insecurity, removing conflict anxiety, stopping self-rejection… It’s deleting code from your mind.
We need both.
But when I first started working on my insecurity, I learned too much and unlearned too little. And so had everyone I’ve helped.
But the abilities we desired weren’t bottlenecked on doing more learning. They were bottlenecked on unlearning the insecurity in the way.
The man above did not “learn how to ask women out”—he unlearned the insecurities that were stopping this natural skill.
