Learning, Unlearning and Relearning for Gen Z

Our natural tendency is to learn new things and adapt to unique circumstances as human beings. It is what helps us evolve and grow as human beings. Just as we constantly keep learning things, we must also note the importance of unlearning things. Letting go of old customs and habits while adapting to new ones is essential for your growth.

As they say, change is the only constant. We must reflect upon ourselves and try to improve upon our flaws. For example, let’s take a look at the current pandemic. We learned to make use of virtual platforms to communicate with each other. To stay relevant in any industry, you have to learn new skills toremain relevant. As rightly said by Henry Ford, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”

Different people have different approaches to learning new things. Similarly, I think we all should take our own time and figure out what’s best for us and how we should go about it when learning something new.

Unlearning

Unlearning means letting go of old habits and mentalities. This happens as we mature. Usually, when we stop learning, we feel like there is some stagnation. But let us look at it differently. We can think of it as reflecting upon our actions and thoughts and bettering ourselves.

This is especially important for letting go of certain toxic behaviors that society has normalized. This process takes time and is necessary to bring about a change in people’s mindsets. In unlearning, we break down our thoughts and ask ourselves specific questions:

Why have I done this so far?

Does this align with my moral principles?

Is this what I truly aspire to be as a human being?

Is what I am doing helpful to the people around me? How does it affect them?

Asking oneself these questions will help one truly reflect upon their actions and realize which of them had a bad influence on others. For example, unlearning may mean getting rid of bad habits. For example, you are not eating healthy, not working out, smoking, and etc.

Unlearning should be seen as a way to pause and introspect. Unlearning may also mean leaving people who are a toxic influence on your life, who bring you and others down. After all, you are the average of the five people you surround yourself with. The whole process of unlearning is slow and comes gradually.

Relearning

Relearning means embracing the changes that come your way and accepting them. It means learning a new method or getting a fresh perspective, which one can only achieve outside their comfort zone.

For example, it may mean adapting to the virtual scenario as the pandemic struck us in our situation. A part of relearning is to get creative and find out new and better approaches to things you may or may not have done before. Relearning may also mean changing society’s beliefs and progressing towards more unbiased opinions.

For example, it could mean their way of looking at the LGBTQ community, their approach to helping eradicate racism, or maybe even changing the education system. Today’s youth are rebellious and will no longer tolerate any form of injustice. We are more proactive and want to take better control of the situation than before. Relearning may also mean catching up on your old hobbies, which you were too lazy to continue at one point in time. Maybe, it might be the right time for you to pick up that dusty old guitar lying in your room for a long time. Or, it could also mean learning to interact physically with people after bearing a pandemic for what seems to be the most extended period of our lives.

We want to portray that learning, unlearning, and relearning go hand in hand. These are all very important for our growth and shape us to be better individuals. One cannot do without the absence of even one of these factors. There is a quote by Deepak Chopra that says, “The past is history, the future is a mystery, and this moment is a gift. That is why this moment is called the present”. Similarly, we must learn to embrace our present and inculcate within ourselves the habits of learning, unlearning, and relearning in our day-to-day lives. This will lead to our holistic development and enable us to live life to its fullest.

How self-aware are you?

Once in a while, we find ourselves completely lost. We follow the way that has been designed for us, similar to a manikin or a puppet, and still locate ourselves in the middle of nowhere without a map or compass to manage the way, or a cell phone to call home.

That is the thing that life is: an incomprehensible Bermuda Triangle.

You have nobody but yourself as a resource to remain above water. We spend the greatest years of our lives going to class to figure out how to be something.

We’re not generally beyond any doubt of what that something is, but despite everything we go to class, do homework and concentrate for tests. Some invest more energy than others, but we all try.

In reality, books won’t lead you out of the forested areas. You can’t search for answers in the dictionary, and a map will never lead you where you should go. All the training and knowledge on the planet can’t make you whole.

Qualifications don’t come with a purpose. You can have straight A’s forever, however, they will never lead you to your identity. Schools don’t teach you much about yourself. The discovery of the self is the most significant lesson you were never taught.

Finding out about yourself ensures you a route past money and achievement. When you are self-aware, you are a power to be figured within this world since then you are ahead of everything.

A majority of people have no clue about who they are, and you can easily tell by their mentality and life-decisions. Being self-aware means winding up more beyond any doubt of yourself by setting benchmarks and seeing precisely what you need.

What helped me get self-awareness was my volunteering experience.

Here are 3 things my volunteering experience helped me boost:

Becoming self-aware

Being by myself, helping other people for 6 weeks gave me a lot of time to think about me. It made me realize how I can do much more than I ever thought. The need to interact with people from all around the world made me reflect a lot on my own beliefs and habits.

I can honestly say that I came out of this experience knowing much more about myself that I ever thought I would, and I take this knowledge for life.

Confidence

During my exchange, every day there was a new challenge, and I had to overcome it alone. And this made me realize strengths that I never knew I had.

Before, I would tremble and question my ability on doing a lot of things. Now I know that, even if I’m not able to do something yet, I can always learn it.

Life fulfilment

Of course, being out there helping an NGO is extremely rewarding! Seeing the smile on people’s face, know that I actually made a difference, it’s priceless. We have the horrible habit of taking care only about ourselves and focusing on our own lives, but there’s so much we can do, even with small actions, to make the world a little better.

These three elements made me more prone to have an uplifting point of view towards my life and objectives.

One of the advantages of volunteering is that it gives you a nearby look at how your activities are affecting people around you. Besides, being a piece of a volunteer program can influence you to feel glad and give you a sense of purpose.

Volunteering can fill voids in individuals.

Helping other people may enable you to conquer individual battles and give your life new significance and a sense of purpose. It takes your mind off of your stresses and makes you meet new experiences and individuals that may even influence you to land at new answers for them.

Moreover, volunteering keeps you mentally empowered and as said by Wharton educator Cassie Mogilner, it influences you to feel like you have additional time.

Stepping out of your comfort range of familiarity is among the advantages of volunteering abroad. This encourages you to accomplish your personal objectives and set new ones and be in a steady condition of self-change. Volunteering additionally makes you more self-aware and making you a better version of yourself, it improves your own quality in your eyes.

Do you have a fantasy? Do you have an objective? What moves you to attempt an idea?

These are the start-up devices for executing your fantasy. Where does one discover such devices? For many people, finding these devices resembles searching for a buried treasure. Not knowing where to look, the vast majority acknowledge life as it is given to them; what could be possible?

People who have discovered achievement can help make conditions where others discover the instruments for progress.

Tall boats have a demonstrated achievement record for helping individuals discover their basic purpose for existing. 6 weeks on board a tall ship, as a crew member, will change an existence until the end of time, it’s your marathon, it’s your hustle.

Most tall boats are preparing vessels to build character, confidence, and self-assurance. To put it plainly, it changes lives. So let’s become a Global Volunteer today and board this tall ship!

Blog by- Anisha Bhawnani

Things we wish the school would have taught us

Until now, most of us might have realized that we’ve been utilizing less and less of what we learned in school . There are number of aptitudes that are essential to progress which were never at any point offered in school!

The History, English, Biology and Material Science? Besides giving us a general understanding of the world and influencing us to sound intellectual at parties, most of us can’t consider anything in there that we truly use on everyday basis. Today we live in a world that is full of tension, anxiety and stress. Most of the people are unhappy because of some or the other things. Our happiness has become dependent. But to be honest,

Our happiness is our choice.

Yes! Joyfulness is a perspective and your perspective is your responsibility. Our Joy isn’t dependent on some other person, our connections improves our lives however they don’t make us happy. WE DO. By happiness, let’s come to a very affirmative word known as

Positivity,

Our positive attitude is a guide to our positive life, it brings us millions of positive opportunities. Hardships are just to make us strong and to make us realize the value of small admirable things but if we don’t challenge those hardships with a positive attitude, that’s when we actually start failing. But failure doesn’t stand for not getting good grades, because schools never thought about

Prioritising learning over grades.

A large portion of us generally felt that grades were inconceivably important. While this is valid, grades aren’t the main thing you need to land a position or get through life. Now, on the grounds that they aren’t everything doesn’t impliy that you should avoid each one of those irritating classes and still be alright. They aren’t an impression of capacity or knowledge yet, they are an impression of hard work!
Prioritising learning over evaluations is vital to progress. Learning also implies on learning skills of Adaptation, because today,

Adaptation is necessary for survival.

We learned that animals adapt according to climatic changes but same goes for human. In a world full of Global Warming, Ozone Depletion, Pollution, we need to adapt. We all know we need to work on it for sustainability but we need to adapt as well. We need to adapt with the new innovations in technology to survive in a corporate world. It’s difficult to survive without Networking and Upgraded technology. Imagine a person still using floppy disk?
And the most important thing,

Be yourself.

The world we live in, tries to transform us into something we are most certainly not. There are number of gauges about the way we should talk, carry on and look. Express, and have confidence in your own self. Try not to go out and search for a successful personality and copy it. Being certain is the way to life. Try not to be hesitant to be you!
You might not be like as many individuals around you, with your own style and identity, and be okay with it. If you are okay with it, the world will be too.

But, as it is said, better late than never. So what if we tell you that there’s still a classroom where we can learn the most important chapters of our life book, a classroom beyond the 4 walls, a classroom full of students who don’t compete but join hands together to make a change for better future.
LET’S BE A GLOBAL LEADER, LET’S BE A GLOBAL VOLUNTEER.