All of us have some pre-conceived notions that we have internalised. It could be our belief systems, the way we process things, the way we learn etc. All this has been drastically challenged by the ongoing pandemic and we were forced to adapt to a new way of living and working. The most amazing thing about humans is that we have the ability to adapt to the situation around us, but owing to our rigid ways, we seldom like to be challenged out of our comfort zone.
Being comfortable with your ‘uncomfortable’
If the pandemic has taught me one thing, it is to unlearn what we already know and live by, when needed. The world is a dynamic place and it will continue to evolve, if we do not adapt with time, we will be left behind. Our rigidity is not going to lead us anywhere. Take the example of a conversation with a colleague or even a friend, have you noticed sometimes how engrossed we get in trying to prove our point, that we totally close ourselves off to the ideas that they might be sharing? Why? Because we are too set in our own ways. That is the moment when we actually stop listening to what the other people are saying, and get busy in framing how we will answer or give it back to them. We are all guilty of that.
So, I did a small exercise to try to make myself uncomfortable, challenge my beliefs and what I have grown up learning, without even questioning. Take the example of a typical scenery: We know it will have brown mountains, yellow Sun, green grass and blue river. But here’s what I drew (image on left). It might look easy, but trust me, it wasn’t. Every single moment when I coloured the mountains pink instead of brown, the river green instead of blue, the grass blue instead of green, the sun brown instead of yellow, I was cringing inside.
My mind screamed at me for not conforming to what I had internalised long back as a child that water is supposed to be blue, and grass is supposed to be green.
The power of unlearning
My drawing may be an oversimplification of the problem, but what I am really trying to say is that growth and creativity happen when we step out of our comfort zone. There are times when we need to unlearn what we have already internalised. We need to question our beliefs. We need to reflect, and reason with ourselves about why we think the way we think, and ask ourselves is there a better way to go about it? It is only when we unlearn what needs to be unlearned, that we actually allow ourselves to learn again.
As Brené Brown puts it, “[…] we need to cultivate the courage to be uncomfortable and to teach the people around us how to accept discomfort as a part of growth.”
The pandemic has made me unlearn a heap of things, and even though I cringed while I colored my tree bark red instead of brown, the initial shouts from my mind calmed down eventually. The bottom line is, if we want to grow, we need to accept the fact that discomfort/cringing/being uncomfortable is all part of the process in pushing our limits and boundaries.
We need to learn to unlearn, in order to keep learning!
Feature Image: Photo by Jackson Films on Unsplash
