- All The Joyful Things
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- January 19, 2024
Hello friends,
I don’t know about you, but I often find myself not asking the questions I have. I think it is often an ego things. I feel like it would somehow make me look bad to admit that I don’t know absolutely everything about everything, which is of course nonsense.
I think back to my school days and how relieved I was when someone asked the question I had been wanting to ask, but was too scared to because I thought I’d look foolish for asking something everyone else clearly understood. At some point, I was able to make the jump from recognizing that I was relieved when other people ask those questions, to guessing that others felt relieved when I asked the question.
Curiosity is a habit. It feeds off of itself. Brené Brown writes in Dare to Lead, “We have to have some level of knowledge or awareness before we can get curious.” If we shut down our impulse to ask questions whenever it pops up because we are afraid of the vulnerability of admitting we don’t know something, we rob ourselves and our community not just of that particular answer, but of the habitual practice of curiosity.
On January 3rd, when I asked about your guiding values, I shared a different quote by Brené Brown about curiosity, which I realized was one of my guiding values this year thru that journaling prompt:
Curiosity is unruly. It doesn’t like rules, or, at least, it assumes that all rules are provisional, subject to the laceration of a smart question nobody has yet thought to ask. It disdains the approved pathways, preferring diversions, unplanned excursions, impulsive left turns. In short, curiosity is deviant.
According to an article for Psychology Today by Jennifer Gerlach, we need to feel safe in order to indulge in our curiosity. At the same time though, engaging in curiosity can help with anxiety and depression, making us feel safer. She gives these five suggestions for how to cultivate curiosity:
Revisit Childhood Joys
Do Something Unexpected
Pick Something Random and Learn About It
Ask Questions
Explore a New Place
Take 5-15 minutes and
Make a list of things you are curious about.
Revisit Childhood Joys - As a child, I was endlessly fascinated by pirates.
Do Something Unexpected - In The Secret to a Long Life, an episode of Radiolab from October 2023, they find that the secret to the longest feeling life is to continuously have new experiences. One of the reasons that childhood years seem so much longer than our average day, or month, or year in adulthood, is the relative percentage of unique new experiences. The more rote and routine our life is, the less we have to be curious about.
Pick Something Random and Learn About It - I love the Great Courses, especially the history ones, and I realized that I have huge gaps in my historical knowledge. It has been really fun to dive deeper into those gaps whenever I identify them.
Ask Questions - Yesterday I had a meeting for a new project I’m collaborating on. I made myself ask more questions and definitions whenever I wasn’t fully clear on something. Not only did it not feel embarrassing. It felt wonderfully empowering and inspired so much trust and made me feel so positively towards this collaboration.
Explore a New Place - I just moved to a new neighborhood. I have so much to explore! Yesterday we went to a new coffee shop.
For me curiosity and joy are deeply linked, so I hope they are for you as well. I’d love to hear what you are curious about!
Your friend,
Laura