reach adulthood, we are driven as much by habit as by anything
else, and there is an infinity of habits in us. From the woman
who twirls a strand of hair when she’s nervous or bored to the
man who expresses his insecurity by never saying “thank you,”
we are all victims of habits. They do not merely rule us, they
inhibit us and make fools of us.
To free ourselves from habit, to resolve the paradoxes, to
transcend conflicts, to become the masters rather than the
slaves of our own lives, we must first see and remember, and
then forget. That is why true learning begins with unlearning—
and why unlearning is one of the recurring themes of our story.
Every great inventor or scientist has had to unlearn conven-
tional wisdom in order to proceed with his or her work. For ex-
ample, conventional wisdom said, “If God had meant man to
fly, He would have given him wings.” But the Wright brothers
disagreed and built an airplane.
No one—not your parents nor your teachers nor your
peers—can teach you how to be yourself. Indeed, however well
intentioned, they all work to teach you how not to be yourself.
As the eminent child psychologist Jean Piaget said, “Every time
we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it
himself.” I would go a step further. Every time we teach chil-
dren something, rather than helping them learn, we keep them
from inventing themselves. By its very nature, teaching ho-
mogenizes, both its subjects and its objects. Learning, on the
other hand, liberates. The more we know about ourselves and
our world, the freer we are to achieve everything we are capa-
ble of achieving.
Many leaders have had problems with school, particularly
their early school experiences. Albert Einstein wrote, “It is
nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of in-
struction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of
Knowing Yourself