Heal With Fun - Unlearn Your Old Stories

If you're on your healing journey, you know that there's always some room for fun! In this track, I share with you a simple 3-step process that helped me heal from old painful stories in the most fun way possible.

Transcript

Welcome to this new little adventure in your healing journey.

We are about to have so much fun with unlearning.

I have a lot to share about unlearning because it helped me so much in my healing journey.

It helped me with feeling not enough.

It helped me with my relationships.

It helped me with so many thoughts and ideas that I had about myself that I was able to change in the most simple and fun way possible.

And I cannot wait to share it all with you.

My name is Ken Solomon and I want to share with you the concept of unlearning today.

You might be wondering what exactly is unlearning and how do you do it?

So I tried to find like a way to explain unlearning that is super simple.

So basically unlearning is you are changing things that you know about yourself.

It's basically you taking an old story that you know about yourself or a self-image that you have been holding for years and that has been stopping you from living a happy fulfilled life or an idea that you formulated about yourself that is stopping you from chasing your biggest dreams and literally challenging that.

You have no idea how fun it is to basically take all the old stories that you know about yourself and challenge them with what you have available to you right now.

There's so much that you can change,

There's so much fun that you can have and I cannot wait for you to actually take action on this.

So now that you know what unlearning is,

How do you do that and what can it do for you?

So on a personal level,

Unlearning helped me heal things about my hobbies,

Things about my self-image and things about my relationships and friendship.

And I want to tell you a little story.

So back in middle school we had a class that was specific for crafts and I couldn't crochet in class.

I was the only girl in my class who couldn't do the simplest most basic knit of crochet and my teacher kind of like made the whole class laugh at me and she said that I have very weird looking fingers that I would never ever be able to hold a crochet needle in my life.

And since then I had this image about myself that I will never be able to do anything knitting related.

Even though I had this passion,

I was like looking at knitting patterns and seeing people doing all sorts of stuff but I always had it in my heart that I cannot knit,

Not after what happened.

If my teacher saw that,

That means I just have really weird fingers that cannot knit.

Funny enough when I was first introduced to the concept of unlearning things changed because one of the ideas that I wanted to challenge is can I really not do anything knitting related?

And to my surprise when I decided to challenge that idea I learned how to punch needle in two hours in my 30s and that was one of the biggest surprises ever and it was so much fun because since then I do punch needle projects almost every month and I enjoy them so much.

The same way with my self-image there was so much that I've been told growing up about myself about the way I look,

About my sense of humor or lack thereof about the way I see the world I was accused of being too dreamy my head is in the sky I speak too fast I'm too loud I'm too much and I literally sat down for months taking each and every self-image that was stopping me from chasing my biggest dreams and challenging it and unlearning it I spent years learning new things about myself that I never thought possible and I'm still unlearning now and I will continue to unlearn more and more because it is so much fun and so liberating every time you see that you had a certain idea about yourself for a very long time and you just held on to that story and didn't challenge it and then when you challenge it you realize oh that thing was not true that story was just a story it doesn't have to continue with me for the rest of my life the same with friendships I,

We moved around a lot when I was growing up so I didn't stay in like one country for a very long time and I didn't have long-term friendships like I don't have friends from school or from college or things like that so when I started like at the beginning of my 30s I really wanted to have new friends but I had this image or old story that if you didn't have good friendships growing up you won't be able to maintain long-term friendships and right now at 39 I have nine-year-old friendships and eight-year-old friendships things that I didn't have growing up since I started to challenge that and allowed myself to try to make new friends and some of the people that I met in my journey so far are people who I met online and then we met in real life and we're having so much fun and we're like we couldn't believe how deep our relationship has gotten over the years by only knowing each other online and then when we met for the first time offline it was like we've been friends for years it didn't feel weird it didn't feel awkward like if you have online friends you know what I'm talking about so these are just some little stories about things that I was able to heal thanks to learning it's one of the most simple underrated concepts ever and I promise you once you start learning one thing it's going to get a little addictive in the most fun way ever so what.

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Like how do you exactly unlearn something?

Okay Kenz I'm intrigued I really want to try this what do I do?

It's literally three simple steps list,

Test,

And reflect for list you literally make a list of all the things you know about yourself that you would love to challenge that are stopping you from having a better day or having a peaceful day or having a peaceful week or a peaceful life or chasing that dream that you know in your heart that you want but you keep telling yourself I'm not good enough for that or I'm not thin enough for that or I'm not smart enough for that or I had a bad experience before so I'm not gonna try that again I don't want to be publicly embarrassed I don't want to be blah blah blah blah if that idea in your head is at least five year old or older you have to challenge it you have to try to unlearn it then after you list those ideas you start testing them if you think for example I won't be able to walk 3,

000 steps a day some people don't at one point in my life I was on bed rest for over 100 days and I couldn't walk a thousand steps in a day to save my life so at one point in my life I thought and believed that I would never be able to do 3,

000 steps a day for some people 10,

000 steps a day is like the minimum or like their day-to-day thing so think of the thought and then challenge it take an action that would test this and see if it's true and I highly suggest you start super small to give yourself that little motivation it's not something like not sure if I'm afraid of heights anymore so you go to a 20 floor building and like look at the balcony in there no no don't do that instead think small and fun what would you like to challenge?

It could be something like quitting sugar I thought I would never be able to drink anything without sugar in it it would taste bad I tasted it before years ago I was trying to taste something without sugar and it tasted really bad and I kid you not I haven't drank anything with sugar in it for the past six years and my usual sugar intake before that was up to 12 spoons of sugar a day which was lethal so think small and start challenging and do it in the most fun way ever have a little journal or notebook and start reflecting this is the idea that I had about myself and this is the test that I did and this is how it felt what went right what went wrong and continue to do that it's as simple as that it doesn't have to be complicated it just needs to be fun and simple this is why I have a little challenge for you I want you right here right now to make a list of the first five things you want to unlearn this month think small think super small a certain color that you think doesn't go with your complexion try wearing that a certain shade of lipstick if you wear lipstick or nail polish maybe just maybe saying a certain word like English is not my first language and it was very challenging for me to say enthusiasm or enthusiastic it took me a long time to have the courage to try to say that again and I just say it enthusiasm I am really enthusiastic about this unlearning thing so think very very small but I want you to share with me those five things they could be old stories they could be opinions of other people about you that you took in and just like lived by for some reason maybe a parent told you something about yourself and you just believed that and acted upon that maybe a teacher maybe someone significant to you that gave you their opinion about you that is basically just a reflection of what they think but you took that as this is a person who knows more than me so that means that what they think of me is true or they can see something that I don't challenge that I really really want to see the first things you're going to want to unlearn because I want to celebrate you when you unlearn these things and I want you to live a day-to-day life where you continue to unlearn at least one thing a day I know this is like this is too much to start with so don't do one thing every day now just start with the first five now and once you challenge those and start seeing results take it easy and make it fun if it starts to get a little overwhelming remind yourself you are great as is you are not a continuous self-development project you are enough as is and you're just playing with things in order to enjoy your day-to-day life more I really hope that was helpful I really cannot wait to read your list and thank you for being here