Unlearning
It’s the end of the year, the days are short and that always puts me in the mood for looking back and try to summarise the past year.
And while I was thinking about this last night in bed it struck me that one of the more important things that I have heard, if not always learned, this year is that it is useless to try and unlearn things.
It’s just not possible and can be very frustrating if you try.
As far as I have seen, all people have behaviours, thoughts, or patterns that they want to get rid of. And the most common reaction this is to try and get rid of it by forcibly change it, and it always ends up in an exhausting fight that leaves you feeling even more disappointed with yourself because you can’t do it.
So far this year I’ve tried to lose my smoking habit, my arrogance, my inability to accept the fact that I tire more easily than I do, my perfectionism, my desire to change others, and if I tried the list would probably become a lot larger than I care for.
The changes that have occured mostly have occured when I seemingly didn’t do anything about them at all!
And yesterday evening I remembered something about this that was told to me in therapy and which I had nearly forgotten. It may explain it.
It’s that while it is impossible to unlearn things, it’s entirely possible to learn new behaviour.
It probably sounds very easy and straightforward, and it is, but the effects of doing it this way can go a long way.
I’ve basically stayed away from drink, not by quitting drinking, but by learning new ways to deal with the world and the way I am affected by it. The happy side effect of this is that I don’t feel the need to grab the bottle as much as I needed to.
The same goes for my attitude towards work. I’ve not actively changed my perfectionism and need for confirmation, I’ve learned new strategies of working with them, and the side effect is that my old behaviour doesn’t surface as much.
In addition to the side effects of both, I’ve affirmed myself as a person that can learn and adapt and gained a new appreciation for myself.
Meditation, to me, seems to be one of the more radical alternate strategies to the habit of trying to unlearn. In effect it’s actually stopping in your tracks and doing nothing. And it’s amazing how much effect doing nothing in a given situation can have.
The difficult part of all this is, that it’s actually quite hard to concentrate on just working on the alternate strategy and not thinking about the fact that maybe in a while you won’t have to rely on the old one anymore. At least, that’s how it works for me. It’s very easy to start thinking: “Oh, how great it’s going to be that I won’t do X anymore in the future, if I just concentrate on Y!”
That just leads you back to thinking about X and how much you dislike doing it, and then spending energy on it. The trick is to notice it, and then lightly just go back to doing Y. In all probability, that’s the reason that after a while I noticed that I didn’t do X anymore and was surprised by it. I just hadn’t paid attention to it anymore, because the other kind of behaviour substituted for it and worked.
The key factors seem to be awareness of what you are thinking and doing, concentration on the new behaviour and simply trust or faith that continuous practice will produce results. The awareness makes you notice what is happening, the concentration keeps you on track, and the trust, or faith helps you deal with the bad stretches that you are bound to encounter.
So, to all out there who are making New Year’s resolutions (this includes me): good learning and don’t worry about the unlearning!
Have a good day!
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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 09:19 and is filed under Buddhism, Daily, Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
