(826 words - estimated reading time: less than 4 minutes)

 

Last January, a posted question on the Internet made me stop surfing in my tracks!  On a Googled Search, someone asked a simple question:  "Can I unlearn a profession?" 

 

A straightforward, unblinking answer was provided -

 

"You sure can. If you open up your skills page (press the K key) you will see a list of your skills and professions.  Click on the profession you want to get rid of and it will be displayed in the lower box and next to the profession bar there will be a red cancel icon. Clicking on this will prompt you with the question "Are you sure you wish to unlearn this profession?" From there you can select yes or no as appropriate."

 

Sheesh, I'm thinking.  After over 20 years of coaching and consulting in human behavior and helping people develop in their professions, how in the world did I miss the "K key" and that darn "red cancel icon"? Things would have been a lot easier if I'd known about them!  Don't get too excited. The simple Q&A I'd stumbled upon was referencing WoW, under the title "Trade Skill Deletion Reminder".  If you're not familiar with the acronym WoW, it stands for World of Warcraft™ and it is indeed a fantasy world.

 

Although, as it turns out, not a complete fantasy.  The instructions went on to add this information...

 

"To avoid having any of your trade skills/professions randomly removed, we advise that you select 2 trade skills you would like to keep and manually unlearn the rest. To unlearn a trade skill, select the trade skill you wish to unlearn, and click the Unlearn button that appears to the right of the skill. In order to learn a new primary profession, a player must unlearn one existing primary profession first."  Our brain simply isn't wired to unlearn, to let go. We're wired to acquire. To keep, to cache, to preserve. Ultimately, to possess. And this drive to acquire not only includes the flat screen TVs, cars and houses, but also all our intangibles of knowledge, ideas and beliefs that we accumulate in a lifetime. Just as the shelves and closets of our lives get filled with all the "stuff" we struggle to toss, the shelves and closets of our brain become "stuffed" with the learning of a lifetime.  And yet, to learn, unlearn and relearn throughout our life is a mandatory requirement of being an effective and successful human being.  These three simple yet complex activities are the foundation of our most valued and powerful attribute - the ability to adapt.  It's because we adapt that we're still here after more than 200,000 years of evolution.  Of course, some of us adapt more easily than others.

 

As a trusted advisor and coach, I'm spending a lifetime influencing people to change, to unlearn the ineffective and nonproductive and acquire new, more productive ways of thinking and doing. Sounds logical, doesn't it? Like it should be easy? Unfortunately, we're also prone to illogic, compulsion and old fashioned fear of the unknown.

 

So, how do you adapt and unlearn something to make room for all that relearning we must do throughout a lifetime? Well, you could read through the 2 million Internet hits for human effectiveness. Or you could use these three and one-half steps that my clients find invaluable.

• #1. Be conscious: don't live your life on auto-pilot. Build an authentic and honest awareness of your relationship with the world around you.  Ask, "Is my personal lens of the world accurate?" And most importantly, challenge your habitual ways of thinking and doing!
• #2. Know that whatever that lens in #1 shows you is probably going to lay down the track of what you DO in the world. Is there alignment between what you see you want to do and the track you're laying down? 
• #3. After you DO enough things in the world, guess what? The world is going to react to your choices. So pause long enough to ask yourself, "What feedback is the world giving me?" Now use this feedback as a reality check to either change or keep on thinking and doing what you've been thinking and doing.
• #3 �. Now, go back to #1. Because if you really want something different out of your life here, you've got to manage the way you SEE it.

 

     1.) If you're a leader, let everyone who works with/for you know that they're valued and respected. And don't cop out here - you can only accomplish this through genuine face-to-face engagement.
 
     2.) Take charge of your own professional development. Stop putting your career growth in the hands of other people. Your work belongs to you - own it, manage it.
 
     3.) Proactively seek out the information you need to perform your very best at work. Feeling competent at work is a huge motivator!
 
     4.) Ask for feedback...frequently. Don't waste this invaluable resource! USE the feedback to make productive change.
 
     5.) Avoid negativity (easier said than done, but possible). When people around you begin the bitch-and-moan sessions, remove yourself. Don't get drawn into habitual downers that drain energy.
 
     6.) Only make commitments you can keep. Create a personal system of organization and planning that enables you to manage and exercise your ability to complete tasks. Again, accomplishment drives the experience of competence and competence is (see above)...a huge motivator!
 
     7.) Build positive, energizing relationships at work and find ways to collaborate with others in building a healthy work climate. If your organization doesn't have a formal process for taking care of its climate, encourage someone in charge to start one and offer to help.

Having to do a job you dislike or work in a climate that's toxic every day takes its toll.
UCLA's School of Public Health thinks the issue is serious enough that it offers a course entitled "Work and Health".  The syllabus, in part, says "The greater our exposure to insecure, low control, and low paying jobs; punishing, harsh or inflexible supervisors; work-family conflicts; the less access we have to money, power and the ability to cope and gain control over those pressures, the higher the chance for chronic stress and chronic illness to result."
 
Remember, a prime key to solving the problem of job stress is to make sure we ask the right question. "Do I hate my work?" or "Do I hate where I work?"