UNTRAIN YOUR BRAIN: Why Most Job Skills Are Actually Just Survival Skills
You weren't born to obey broken systems. You were trained to. Here's how to break that training and start thriving, not just surviving.
You’re not lazy. You’re overtrained.
Let’s get one thing straight: most of the "skills" people praise in modern workplaces hyper-efficiency, staying quiet, over-delivering without pushback aren’t strengths. They're survival tactics.
Tactics you picked up just to exist in dysfunctional work environments.
"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." – Jiddu Krishnamurti
We call it professionalism. But what if it’s actually just trauma with a timesheet?
What Survival Skills Look Like at Work:
- Over-communication out of fear of being misunderstood
- Obsessive perfectionism to avoid criticism
- Saying yes to everything to not look ungrateful
- Taking on extra work for praise instead of fair pay
- Avoiding feedback because you were never allowed to fail safely
Sound familiar? These aren’t signs of a high-functioning employee. They’re symptoms of a high-pressure environment.
So how do we unlearn this? We go primal.
You weren’t built to sit in silence, nod politely, and suppress your instincts. You were built to explore, challenge, test, and evolve.
"In times of change, learners inherit the earth." – Eric Hoffer
It’s time to tap back into those instincts the same ones that made you curious as a kid, that still light you up when you’re in flow. We call it Monkey Education: learning through movement, trial, emotion, and chaos.
Rebuilding with Monkey Instincts:
- Curiosity over compliance Ask the questions you were trained to bury. Why is this process here? Is this the best way? What’s not being said?
- Movement over perfection Do, test, tweak. Get feedback early. Don’t wait to make it “perfect.”
- Connection over isolation Learn in public. Share, teach, collaborate. The smartest people aren’t the ones who memorize they’re the ones who explain.
- Reflection over reaction Pause. What habits are you carrying that were once defense mechanisms? Are they still serving you?
"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." – Alvin Toffler
Final thought:
You weren’t born for burnout. You weren’t built for people-pleasing. You’re not broken you’ve just been conditioned to play small in systems that never deserved your full power.
It’s time to untrain. To rewild. To remember.
Because the most valuable skill you’ll ever master in this economy?
Is unlearning.
