Learning Through First Principles and Unschooling

Oct 30

For many years, most things I heard or read, I didn’t question. I gladly accepted them as truth and felt like I had learned something valuable—something worth sharing with everyone around me.

Fifteen years ago, I had a Hispanic fitness channel on YouTube (no, I’m not sharing the link with you!). I gave health and fitness advice, shared workout routines, and felt I was helping people. Most of the time I created my own routines; other times, I did what many of us do:

I read an article, watched a video about a specific diet, or heard some new “health fact,” and then I made a video about it—spreading someone else’s words, disguised as my own.

I didn’t do deep research into those topics, so I was sharing information without really knowing if it was true or not.

Over the years, I began noticing how often “truths” change. Opinions shift, new studies emerge, and what was once accepted as fact gets quietly replaced. Bit by bit, I started to see how often I repeated what others said simply because I didn’t trust my own ability to find out the truth.
That’s what school had trained me to do—follow instructions, don’t question authority, and assume others know better than you.

Discovering First Principles

About 2 years ago, I started hearing about something called first principles thinking. I watched a few videos about it, and what stood out was that first principles are like nature’s laws:
they exist whether we know about them, believe in them, or not.

That idea fascinated me. If I could understand these first principles, maybe I could uncover truth.

Of course, I did what I always did—I began talking about first principles as if I truly understood them. I didn’t, not yet. But this time, my curiosity led me down a deeper path of self-learning. Over the past year, through my own reflections, lived experiences, and many books, I realized something profound:

We can only truly know something when we experience it ourselves.

You can read books, listen to others’ stories, or watch videos that explain an idea—but to understand it, you must live it.
Real learning requires direct experience through our own senses. Only then can we verify if what we’ve been told aligns with reality—or even expand on it with our own findings.

Knowledge vs. Understanding

Learning isn’t a single event. It’s not a “Eureka!” moment that arrives out of nowhere (though sometimes it feels that way). It’s a slow unfolding through many experiences over time.

We don’t master a skill by reading about it or doing it a couple of times. We master it through thousands of hours of trial, error, curiosity, and repetition.

That’s why, when it comes to unschooling, my understanding today feels grounded. I’ve lived it. I’ve seen, touched, heard, and felt what it means to learn naturally—through experience, not instruction.

And from this lived understanding, one truth keeps standing out:
If we want to know how humans learn best, we can simply observe nature.

Nature: The Original Teacher

Nature is the ultimate expression of efficiency and intelligence. It doesn’t waste energy, and it doesn’t force anything to grow before its time.

Look at how a baby learns:
to hold on, breastfeed, lift their head, crawl, stand, walk, talk… none of it is taught through instruction or curriculum. It’s pure experience, guided by innate curiosity and readiness.

If nature had stopped this way of learning at some age, humanity wouldn’t have survived. Our natural ability to learn continues for life—unless something interferes.

And that’s exactly what school does. It interrupts this flow of natural, experiential learning and replaces it with memorization, instruction, and comparison. It teaches us to look outward for answers rather than inward for understanding.

Returning to Natural Learning

After years of unschooling my children and living through my own deconditioning, my understanding of this truth runs much deeper than when I first wrote about it years ago.

I can now see that when we align with what’s natural, everything flows with ease. Learning becomes as effortless as breathing, walking, or exploring.