Did Curiosity Kill The Cat?

There is power in curiosity.

Uncovering the power of curiosity.

“I think at a child’s birth if a mother could ask a fairy Godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.” Eleanor Roosevelt

What does curiosity mean to you? To me it means fun things like joy, adventure, wonderment, openness, and expansion. It is about learning something new. I think of my twin grand babies who are on an endless exploration from morning until they drop into bed at night. Even mealtime is a learning experience, food as science experiment, face paint, tactile and tasting extravaganza, and more.

When was the last time you savored your food, noticed the burst of sweetness when biting into an apple, or spent even a moment trying to distinguish flavors in a sweet or savory dish? I know way too often I fix something and as I eat it, my mind is on everything else but what I am eating. A bit of curiosity might change that. There is power in being in the present moment.

I also think of my mom. We called her Pure Positive Energy, just don’t get in her way. She had unending curiosity wanting to stay up to date on everything and everyone. She passed on when she was 96 and still paid her bills on her phone. She went out and got herself an Apple phone the minute they launched and signed herself up for a class to learn how to use it. She was an avid reader of books and several newspapers every day. She was always full of questions about everything, full of wonderment. And I know that is one of the secrets of her long and full life. She was interested and interesting.

I love this quote by Tony Schwartz: “Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It is openness, curiosity, and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides.”

Another side to curiosity is a willingness to see things differently. A willingness to find the gray areas, to soften our stance and our surety that we are right and therefore someone else is wrong. It allows us to have a more open mind.

I was on a zoom recently with a neuroscientist who does a lot of work in this field using specific body movements to allow for a softening of the mind. She said science has now proven that when we have a more softened mind, a more curious mind, we learn better. When we are open and calm and we learn something new it has more flexibility in our minds and allows us to use the information in more creative ways. We learn information, not just to regurgitate, but to use in expanded and new ways, more out of the box thinking.

This reminded me of my third grade teacher who was about 4”9 with a gray bun, a stern demeanor, comfortable shoes, and was built more like a square than a line. She would walk around the room spouting off math questions: 6 x 7 +13 - 7 x 3 - 9, and call on one of us to answer. I lived in fear that I would be the one she called on. To this day I have math anxiety and I wonder if my fear of being wrong shut down my ability to learn. To this day, I still don’t know my multiplication tables, despite having been a trader on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade for several years. There I was terrified every day wondering when someone would discover my secret.

Now I wonder if that third grade exercise put my mind into such a panic that I had a hard time learning. I was eventually able to understand more complex problems, but I always go into freeze mode when put on the spot about numbers.

Another benefit of curiosity is when we have a panicky thought. Rather than let our amygdala hijack us, look at the situation with curiosity. The amygdala naturally jumps into action and fight or flight problem solving mode. If we can take a second to unhook from the fear and ask ourselves how we might look at this differently, it immediately has a calming effect. It allows us to look with a fresh view, we see options we may not have seen.

Curiosity can be calming, it allows for more fun, adventure, and learning. It can bring us closer to others who may be different from us in many of the ways that seem to be divisive at the moment like political views, religion, how we look at and live our lives, and our beliefs. I know I am working on being more curious and less judgy.

Betsy Smith

Certified Happy For No Reason trainer and coach

Betsyrsmith@mac.com

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