Are outdated beliefs controlling the way you see the world? It’s time to take a closer look to figure out which ones are worth letting go...
We live in a culture that is scared of ageing, but the truth is, my 30s are even better than my 20s – and a large part of that is thanks to the ‘unlearning’ that has taken place. In my earlier years, I absorbed so many messages from the people, and the world around me, as though they were facts. It was only with age that I started to notice holes in those beliefs. In contrast, my 30s became a time when I sifted through all that I had been taught, and made conscious decisions about what I actually wanted to believe.
My first unlearning really began around body image. Most of us have grown up in a fatphobic, diet-culture-obsessed world, and the main message we receive is that you cannot be happy and fat. In fact, I would even go as far as to say, I was taught that as a woman, you can never be happy in your body, full stop. I had an experience in my 20s when I was developing my body confidence and really starting to appreciate what I looked like, when an older friend in her 50s took me aside to tell me that I was deluding myself by preaching body confidence, and lying to myself that I was happy at my weight. It was at that moment I realised that it was simply a projection of her world, and the messaging she had received – she only thought I was in denial because it seemed impossible to her that someone could truly love their body.
The next ‘unlearning’ came in my love life. We often get taught that being single is a problem to be fixed, that no one can consciously decide to be single – and if you are single, it’s because you’re unloveable and have not been ‘picked’ or ‘chosen’. I refute this. Instead, I believe being single is better than being in a bad relationship – and if you don’t see being single as a viable way to live your life, you will choose someone who doesn’t deserve you, because you’re too scared of being alone. One of the key turning points in my 30s was actively choosing to get off the relationship escalator – from engaged, to married, to kids – and choosing to start again, because I wasn’t being treated in a way that I deserved.
It was in this period of being single that another unlearning would surface – my sex life. I grew up in a religious boarding school where we were taught that even the mere sight of a man could get you pregnant! We were fearmongered about every STI under the sun, and, as a result, I went into my 20s terrified – and ultimately, it is impossible to enjoy sex if you are living in fear. It took trying for a baby in my early 30s to realise that, first of all, getting pregnant was not that easy (I wish!), and second, that women are entitled to pleasure in the bedroom as much as men expect it. To ask for what you need in every context is important, and that certainly includes the bedroom!
Getting better at boundaries and standing up for myself didn’t just appear out of nowhere either. The most fundamental unlearning I had was around what I had been taught about being a ‘good woman’, or even a ‘good person’. It took many years to realise that too many women are trained to be people-pleasers, often putting everyone above themselves. We get pushed into these behaviours, often by name-calling – whether that’s being told we’re ‘difficult’ at work, or ‘selfish’ in our personal life.
The greatest unlearning of all was realising that if I didn’t stand up for myself, no one would. It would take years to unlearn this, piece by piece, but it all started with the realisation that you teach people how to treat you – and if you wake up one morning and see that all the people in your life are treating you badly, you need to start making some changes in order to surround yourself with the kinds of people that you deserve. So that’s what I did! It led to a huge amount of breakups – both platonic and romantic – as I discovered my boundaries, but sometimes you have to lose people in order to make space for new people to enter. Ultimately, that became another unlearning: ending a relationship isn’t always a loss! Sometimes it’s necessary for your next evolution.
The more I unlearned, the more it felt like I became a truer and more authentic version of myself. It was losing the training that I was brought up with which made me realise that my beliefs are my decision, and if I’m going to believe something, it should be because it’s helpful to my life, and not merely because it was inherited. It is so important to use your critical thinking skills to examine where your beliefs stem from, and once that becomes conscious, it means you have the power to change them. Remember, it’s your life and you get to decide what learnings you want to leave behind!
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