Cultivating Curiosity
People are always seeking the newest fad to light them up. However, one of the biggest ways to light up your life and get moving is already within you. It’s called curiosity. We all have it, some with intensity and others with inhibition, but it’s there. The questions I want to address here are: how do you cultivate curiosity, and how can it change your life?
As someone with both “learner” and “input” (collector/archiver) strengths, I have an innate sense of curiosity about, well, everything. I love asking questions - of clients, friends, family, books, websites, art, nature… you get the idea. It is one of the skills that makes me a passionate writer. Before we tackle how you can cultivate curiosity, we need to look at what it is. As I have grown in business and life, I’ve learned that curiosity is both the question and the answer. Confused? Let me ‘splain. (As Inigo Montoya would say in one of my favorite movies of all time. Don’t know it? Curious? Look it up.)
If I could come up with only one symbol to represent curiosity, it would be a question mark. And one word? Why. (Think of the three-year-old who is constantly asking, “why?”) Curiosity drives us to ask questions. It awakens the explorer in us who wonders who, what, when, where, why, and how. This childlike desire to know and discover more keeps us feeling young and honestly makes us more interesting to others. It is another paradox of sorts - by being interested in others, we are more interesting to others. This is tip #1 in this blog post to help you cultivate curiosity:
Be curious about others and ask them questions about themselves, their lives, and their business to build relationships.
Curiosity helps us network and connect, but it also stokes a fire of growth within us. By asking questions, we expand our own awareness and knowledge of the world around us. This in turn can inspire us to form new connections, develop new neural pathways, take action in new directions, and discover parts of ourselves that had been previously hidden. In short, curiosity makes us move.
When I think of the beginning of something, I think of movement. And what is the impetus that makes us move? Curiosity. This is how I see curiosity as the mother of all questions, as the original impetus. If we didn’t have it, we’d never ask questions. So how else do we cultivate curiosity to create more movement in our lives, our relationships, our work?
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” -Albert Einstein
One of the emotions that inspires curiosity is wonder. When we look around us with new eyes, we magically feel wonder about how things are made, the beauty of the natural world, and what drives human behavior. How do you see with new eyes? You can literally use a “new” set of eyes by walking around with a camera and taking pictures of things that intrigue you. Or you can borrow a small child (with parental permission, of course), and wander around a park, a grocery store, or truly almost anywhere and see it through their eyes. Ask them what they see. Follow them where they go. Listen to their noises and comments as they discover grass, avocados, shag carpet for the first time. If you don’t have access to a camera or a small child, follow tip #2 to help you cultivate curiosity:
Use your imagination and go somewhere brand new that engages one of your senses in a powerful way.
For example, for my birthday, my friend, Lexi, took me to a Candle Chemistry shop where we sniffed over 100 scents and wrote down our top 10. Then we narrowed it down to our top 3, and a store member helped us identify combos of 3 based on our favorites that would go well together poured into liquid soy candle wax. I have not engaged my olfactory organs in such an intense way in… well, ever! (For those who are curious, my top three scents that I ended up combining were grapefruit, seafoam and morning dew. I named my candle, “Morning Waves of Grapefruit.”)
What an incredible gift to be curious in such a new way! It awakened my desire to eat more grapefruit, learn more about chemistry and essential oils, visit the ocean and inhale, and burn yummy-smelling candles more at home to improve my environment. Curiosity is magically exponential. From that one curious experience, I have expanded my interests, am more attentive to scents and learned more about what I like. It also provided an excellent conversation topic when I was networking the following week. I shared it with a person who plans on taking his next date there and someone else who found one near her and wants to go through the process so she can imitate it at home.
Not all, but many, human beings are excited by novelty, the quality of things being new, original or unusual. This candle shop experience was certainly novel for me. However, a candle maker might not find it so novel. Yet for them, attending a dance class (which I’ve been doing since I was 3) might be brand new and exciting. One of the easiest ways to cultivate curiosity is to ask ourselves:
What have I always wanted to do but felt too scared / nervous / intimidated to try?
This last tip #3 for cultivating curiosity is more teetering-edge. It takes you right to the brink of insecurity and then says, take the damn step. So many of our inhibitions around being curious involve unfounded fears that taking action will squash like an annoying mosquito.
One of my favorite podcasters, Mel Robbins, is a big proponent of action. She recently interviewed a Harvard professor, Dr. Luana Marques, to better understand what holds people back. I’d highly recommend listening to the episode, but in case you don’t, the main takeaway is that the best antidote to fear and anxiety is action. Call the person. Sign up for the class. Book the trip. Walk away from what no longer serves you. Follow your curiosity into action, and you’ll see how curiosity is not only the question; it’s the answer, often to questions you didn’t even know you had.
Learning from podcasts, articles, blogs, YouTube videos, and books is an excellent way to explore and cultivate curiosity. The more I learn, the more I want to learn - and the more I want to share what I learn with others. Curiosity is the primal content generator. There are many people who have done what I am curious about doing who I can learn from. Gaining wisdom from experts in a given field can fast-track you in your career or business if you apply that wisdom and keep cultivating curiosity, letting one answer lead you to the next question, and so on.
In summary, cultivating curiosity is life-changing and will:
Awaken an exploratory, childlike mindset - see life and opportunities with new eyes
Give you new topics to connect with people on when networking or socializing
Stoke a fire of ongoing growth and self-discovery
Develop new neural pathways - improve cognitive functioning and memory
Make you more interesting to clients, friends, family and partners
Open doors to wisdom from experts in your field or any field you are interested in
Inspire you to take action
When you’re wondering who to talk to, what to do with your life, when to start a family, where to move, why that person did what they did, how to grow your business, or any of the infinite questions you might be asking yourself, call on the creative power of curiosity and take one action step in the direction of your question. The answers you discover may surprise you. And chances are good they will lead to even more curiosity.
