Freedom Friday: Knowledge is Overrated, Environment is KING!

Hello everybody and welcome once again to the Unlearned podcast. I am your host, ruth Abigail, aka RA, and you have entered once again into Freedom Fridays, which is when me, or me and a friend, will share with you what we've unlearned this week and how it has made us just a little bit more free. Alright, so there's a phrase that I we love to use, right, this phrase do your own work, do your own work, do your own work. We use it when we're talking about basically kind of growing out of things that are not just harmful to us but also can be harmful to the things, to the people around us, and it's like you need to do your own work because can't nobody else do it for you? It's not my responsibility to do it for you, it's not my responsibility to change because you're not going to change, like it's just the super charged ownership of your own growth, and I agree with that. I think that that's something that we really should do. We all have our own work to do and we need to be committed to doing that. We all have things we have to unlearn. There are things that, and particularly things that are not useful or that might be harmful even to society, to the people around us, to our families all this stuff we got to do your own work right. Here's why I think we have to be careful with that idea is, if we take it too far, it can assume that the only person that you are to rely on and do in your own work is you right, is you and the resources that might be available to you whether it is a book, a conference, a sermon, whatever those things might be, a podcast, all this education and knowledge that you need right. And when we take that idea too far, I think we can wrongly assume that those things are the major things that are going to really shift our mindset. And while they play a part, I think one thing we absolutely cannot forget is that you know that the reality is doing your own work also has to consist of looking at what I'm surrounded by, right, so my parents used to say this term more is caught than taught. In other words, you're going to be impacted way more by just everyday surroundings and the things that you're taking in, by what you're seeing everyday, what you're experiencing everyday. You're going to get way more from that than you are from intentional kind of gleaning knowledge from a book or from a sermon, or from a lecture or whatever right From any kind of educational tool, our brains are going to pay more attention to what we around more often and what is impacting us more directly right, and so I think this idea, when we talk about doing our own work, we talk about unlearning things. The unlearning process has to also include being very aware of my surroundings, being very aware of my environment, being very aware of the people that I spend the most time with. One of my favorite kind of sayings is you know, if you want to look at, if you want to see your future, look at your friends, the people that you're the closest with, the people that you're around the most. You can see who you'll be by looking at them. They are going to show you where you are headed. And if you don't, if you're not with where they're headed and you think that books and conferences and podcasts and a sermon, even if you go to church on a regular basis, if you think that that's going to counteract the surroundings you are around every day, you're delusional. It's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. It's not enough. It's not enough, and I think that this idea of doing our own work sometimes can mean part of that work Might be shifting my surroundings. Part of that work might be I gotta get from around people that aren't Mirrored where I'm trying to go and that could be really difficult. So, like the unlearning process is not just about knowledge, it's about environment. It's about environment. You have to put yourself in an environment that is going to mirror where it is that you are trying to Land and if the people around you have it landed or aren't in that same direction, don't but don't think that you can try to accumulate knowledge in other ways. That's going to outpace the impact of the community You're a part of. That's tough because it means sometimes we have to break away. We have to. You know, sometimes has to be an immediate thing. Sometimes I might be gradual and over time, but Doing your own work has to mean more than accumulating knowledge and more understanding. It also has to mean that we have to shift who we're around, who's impacting us on a daily basis and what the environment looks like that we operate in day to day. All right, so that's it. That's what I've been on unlearning and I hope that's helpful. Let's keep on learning together so that we can live more freely, and we will see y'all next week. Thank you once again for listening to the unlearned podcast. We would love to hear your comments and your feedback about the episode. Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to let us know what you think. We're looking forward to the next time when we are able to Unlearn together to move forward towards freedom. See you then.