Creative Unlearning: The Art of Reinvention and Creativity

Written and verified by the psychologist Valeria Sabater.

Last update: 15 November, 2021

Creative unlearning offers us something amazing. If we want to recover our true potential, then sometimes there’s no choice but to put aside many of our beliefs and things we have been taught. That way we can try to see the world from another perspective. The resulting new vision must be a broad one, richer in curiosity, creativity and criticism. Only then will we be able to reinvent ourselves, only then will we be freer.

Speaking of creativity is like talking about human capital. Let’s think about it for a moment. We are moving in a labor market where most of us are trained in very similar skills and abilities. However, large companies need to be more innovative to be able to stand out in an increasingly complex and demanding social and economic scenario.

It’s easy to see what it means today for a company to have highly creative people at their disposal. There is a great lack of them and they are very sought after. These are the people who bring a “spark” to the rusty cogs of many an organization. Organizations that are just not moving forward and where any change is undoubtedly a valuable breakthrough. The change itself is important and so it the fact that the company is breaking away from their inertia.

Furthermore, we should also emphasize just what it implies on a personal level to be much more creative. These people are much more open to complex issues and more ingenious when it comes to giving answers to life’s problems. This mental flexibility and ability is a great way to invest in our personal growth.
And achieving it is within our reach …

Creative unlearning: I choose to grow

Being the same as all the rest, or standing out? Living stuck in monotony and mediocrity or choosing to grow in every sense: emotionally, personally and professionally? Which of these would you choose? As Aristotle once said, happiness must be the purpose in which everything else finds its place. To do this, it is essential that we assimilate and train our psychological and emotional resources, which, in turn, will allow us to be more like the person we really want to be.

One way to achieve this is to train ourselves in something we all already have. Something we are born with. Creativity. If we have any doubts about this, or if we think that by nature we are unoriginal and not at all creative, it is worth reading the book by neurologist Alice W. Flaherty, “The Midnight Disease”

It explains how our own emotions, experiences and even the educational systems themselves are gradually putting out our spark, our creative potential, and our motivations …
Thus, in order to “heal” and reinvent ourselves and awaken our sleeping potential, we must put creative unlearning into practice.

To achieve this, nothing better than some good training. Here at Exploring Your Mind,  Professor Ismael Cala, Life and Human Development Strategist, invites us to become the person we really want to be by taking his course “Creativity, Unlearning, and Emotional Intelligence”.

The importance of an awakening

Reinventing yourself is not easy. If we think about it too much, it’s a scary thing. In many ways it’s a type of new birth, where we leave behind part of what we were before, and embrace a different “me”. How can we achieve such a change? It is true that companies value innovation and creativity, but, strangely, society itself prefers us to be passive, silent, docile and with similar tastes to everyone else.

Let’s admit it, reinventing oneself is a challenge that we aren’t all prepared for. We must be able, therefore, to stop looking at things the same way, and, simply, “awaken“. We need an awakening in order to rediscover our very essence. Only then will we be able to take all our internal worth and take it into the world. With our own decisive voice and creativity.
Let’s look at some keys to be able to achieve it, or, at the very least, to reflect on these important ideas.

3 keys to creative unlearning

• Creative unlearning does NOT mean forgetting or pressing the “reset” button to eliminate everything that we have been told or taught. Above all, it means knowing how to question and to never accept there is only one point of view or one truth on any given matter.
• Unlearning also invites us to work on our emotional intelligence to the full. Many of our emotions, habits, beliefs and attitudes veto our creativity.
• Another aspect that we must work on is flexibility. Many of our emotional experiences in life can make us apply a very rigid way of thinking (almost without realizing it) to what people consider correct or acceptable. However, being able to open ourselves to new experiences, be flexible, and practice criticism and self-criticism, will undoubtedly allow us to improve our human potential.

To conclude, it is important to emphasize once again that all of us can achieve it. We can all be more creative, more free, and more sophisticated when it comes to giving answers to life’s problems. Therefore, let’s not hesitate to train ourselves in this capacity, either through courses or specialized books.