Fighting the mind does not work. What works best is learning to focus it.

Force a hand, and it will fight you. But convince a mind to think as you want it to think, and you have an ally.

The reason it's difficult to learn something new is that it will change you into someone who disagrees with the person you used to be.

I am slow to learn and slow to forget that which I have learned. My mind is like a piece of steel, very hard to scratch any thing on it and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out.

You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fightin' with your head for a change.
-Atticus Finch

Knowing was a barrier which prevented learning.

What you resist, persists

Resist much.

Belief gets in the way of learning.

The mind resists change because it wants to remain in the realm of what’s familiar. But when what’s familiar no longer feels good, you must consciously push yourself to practise a new way of being in the world. And when you do so, you’ll begin to emit a new energy from your core, attracting more loving experiences, people and situations into your life.

You can't give kids a fighting chance if you don't give them a fighting mind.

If you keep experiencing the same things, your mind keeps its same patterns. Same inputs, same responses. Your brain, which was once curious and growing, gets fixed into
deep habits. Your values and opinions harden and resist change.

You really learn only when you’re surprised. If you’re not surprised, then everything is fitting into your existing thought patterns. So to get smarter, you need to get surprised, think in new ways, and deeply understand different perspectives.

With effort, you could do this from the comfort of home. But the most effective way to shake things up is to move across the world. Pick a place that’s most unlike what you
know, and go. This keeps you in a learning mindset. Previously mindless
habits, like buying groceries, now keep your mind open, alert, and noticing new things. New arrivals in a culture often notice what the locals don’t. (Fish don’t know they’re in water.)

Fear, which is probably the biggest obstacle to any learning process, is a repressive force. It exists in the mind, and almost always it is based on something that might happen in the future, rather than what is happening now.

If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning.