Curiosity Won’t Kill You; It’ll Make You Stronger

Have you ever been in a situation—at a party or something—where all of a sudden someone starts asking you questions about yourself as though they're genuinely interested in getting to know you? It's kind of a weird feeling, right? It's like the conversation somehow elevates beyond the weather or 'what you do for a living' and becomes… about you. Whether it's your personal interests, hobbies, career, whatever—the point is that in this moment, you feel like the most fascinating person in the room.

Think about a time this has happened to you. If you can’t, think about how great it would feel if it did. Imagine somebody asking you all kinds of questions and follow-ups, “Where’d you grow up? Whoa, really? What was that like?!” Go ahead, spend a couple minutes fantasizing about being on the other side of pure, genuine curiosity. Now think about how it would feel if you treated yourself with that same level of interest.

Is that a weird thought to consider? Can you believe we spend as much time as we do feeling curious about other people, but we rarely ever address ourselves with the same level of curiosity? Curiosity gets such a bad rap. "It didn't work out for the cat, so it probably won't work out for anybody else." I mean, really? First of all—so long as you're not hanging out with drug lords or villainous politicians your curiosity will probably not lead to death. Secondly, there are major differences between self-curiosity, outward curiosity (getting into other people's business), and educational curiosity. I wish we had a better words to distinguish between the three but that's not how the English language works. For the sake of this post, I'm going to make a blanket statement: let's think of outward curiosity as "nosey," educational curiosity as "academic" and inward curiosity as "freaking necessary if you care at all about your emotional well-being." There's a place and time for all of them—but the only one that could potentially kill you (if you're hanging out with a bunch of evil weirdos) is the nosey one. So at this point you might be thinking, “why would I be curious about myself? I already know everything there is to know about me.” I doubt it! And it’s probably because you never asked. Being you and knowing you is different. We all know how to "be" ourselves (for the most part). Knowing ourselves is entirely different. When you’re curious about yourself, you allow yourself to dig deeper into what makes you you—this is the only way you'll ever get to the bottom of what it is that fulfills you. (see where I’m going with this?)

In short: learning to master self-curiosity is one of the major steps toward embracing happiness. Of course, there's always a catch: the trick to mastering this is to be curious without imposing judgment. Read that sentence again! Being curious without self-judgment will pave your way to happiness. The easiest way to do this is to turn on what I'll call ‘science brain.’ That's when you look at yourself through the mind of a mad scientist and you are the world’s most fascinating specimen. (it's actually kind of fun if you're a weirdo like me!)In this light, you can do no wrong. It’s the art of observation without evaluation (you need to collect data before you can analyze, after all!).

So, if you're down to give it a shot, here's a challenge for the rest of the day: try to look at yourself through the eyes of a mad scientist who is obsessed with figuring you out. Notice how you're feeling, notice how you behave, notice how you react to various things. Notice everything. Notice why you choose to wear one shirt over another. Notice what kind of food you make/order/crave throughout the day. Just tune-in, sit back, and watch. While you do this, you might notice ‘judgment brain’ creeping in, which essentially exists to ruin all of your fun at all times. It's going to try to impose an evaluation. Like if you crave a cheeseburger, judgement brain will be all "that's such an unhealthy food choice, I should be ashamed of myself." We don't have time for judgement brain because it gets in the way of the main goal—learning a little more about yourself. So if you come across judgement brain, just call it out. Literally. Say something as simple as, “okay, that’s me being judgmental...” to yourself and move on.

Calling judgment brain out is generally enough to deflate its power over you.  The point to all of this is to get to know what it feels like to be curious about yourself. You want a cheeseburger? Cool. Why? Because it tastes good? Because it will curb your hangover? Because you're lonely and using it as an emotional crutch? .... none of these answers are wrong. But the reality is you can't ever fully embrace happiness without first gaining clarity on who you are and where you're coming from as you walk through your every day.

So give it a shot, eh?