What are you curious about?
It is a deceptively simple question. Like most deceptively simple questions, it can so easily go unnoticed, slipping through the cracks of self-reflection. And yet, like attaching four fully-rotatable wheels to an upright suitcase instead of dragging your luggage through the airport like a dead animal by a leash, the simplest shift can make a world of difference.
When you ask yourself, “what am I curious about?” be open to the responses. They could be grand like climate change, best parenting techniques, or growing a business. Or, they could be smaller like what you should have for dinner tonight, what you might do this weekend with the kids, or what kind of bird keeps making that strange sound outside my window?
Our minds usually race to find an answer; it’s the modus operandi of questioning. There’s nothing particularly deep about choosing Italian for dinner, buying a parenting book on Amazon, or finding out through Google that raptor/turkey-sounding creature is a sandhill crane and it’s endangered so, no you cannot throw your old tennis shoes at it to shoo it away. However, consider taking your daily curiosities one step further into the unknown. Why are you curious about X?
Why do you never plan ahead for dinner? Why are you concerned about your parenting abilities? You’ll likely be dead by the time the ice caps melt or, if not, you’ll have oceanfront property in Philadelphia. Why do you cherish silence in this moment? Why is growing your business important to you and to what point should it grow and why to there?
When we pause to think about what draws our curiosity in this moment, it grounds us. When we consider why we’re curious about that, we bypass the freeway to a hollow and sometimes unsatisfying answer and take the scenic route to self-discovery. Even the oddest curiosities can lead us somewhere truly meaningful.
Example: I want that Jurassic-Park-escapee outside my window to stop gobble-squawking (a fairly accurate description of the sound; click HERE to hear a sandhill crane) because I get anxious at being distracted from my work. Leaving a somewhat stable career as a high school English teacher to become a self-employed coach is a huge decision when there’s two beautiful kids eating me out of my own house in the not-so-distant background. Getting distracted makes me feel unproductive which leads me to self-doubt in my decision. Hypothetically hurling a sneaker to silence the cranes would really be an attempt to control the uncontrollable and to constrict my focus on the negative.
However, by coming to this conclusion, I realize that I can embrace the unavoidable distraction as a reminder that while I make my plans, the world makes its own. The tighter I try to hold onto control, like grasping wisps of smoke, the more it slips from my fingers. Those crane-calls summon me to let go, roll with the punches, adapt, and come out stronger, determined, and when I see that the crane is actually calling to her two young chicks, remember to appreciate why I’m doing what I’m doing.
It is a deceptively simple question. Like most deceptively simple questions, it can so easily go unnoticed, slipping through the cracks of self-reflection. And yet, like attaching four fully-rotatable wheels to an upright suitcase instead of dragging your luggage through the airport like a dead animal by a leash, the simplest shift can make a world of difference.
When you ask yourself, “what am I curious about?” be open to the responses. They could be grand like climate change, best parenting techniques, or growing a business. Or, they could be smaller like what you should have for dinner tonight, what you might do this weekend with the kids, or what kind of bird keeps making that strange sound outside my window?
Our minds usually race to find an answer; it’s the modus operandi of questioning. There’s nothing particularly deep about choosing Italian for dinner, buying a parenting book on Amazon, or finding out through Google that raptor/turkey-sounding creature is a sandhill crane and it’s endangered so, no you cannot throw your old tennis shoes at it to shoo it away. However, consider taking your daily curiosities one step further into the unknown. Why are you curious about X?
Why do you never plan ahead for dinner? Why are you concerned about your parenting abilities? You’ll likely be dead by the time the ice caps melt or, if not, you’ll have oceanfront property in Philadelphia. Why do you cherish silence in this moment? Why is growing your business important to you and to what point should it grow and why to there?
When we pause to think about what draws our curiosity in this moment, it grounds us. When we consider why we’re curious about that, we bypass the freeway to a hollow and sometimes unsatisfying answer and take the scenic route to self-discovery. Even the oddest curiosities can lead us somewhere truly meaningful.
Example: I want that Jurassic-Park-escapee outside my window to stop gobble-squawking (a fairly accurate description of the sound; click HERE to hear a sandhill crane) because I get anxious at being distracted from my work. Leaving a somewhat stable career as a high school English teacher to become a self-employed coach is a huge decision when there’s two beautiful kids eating me out of my own house in the not-so-distant background. Getting distracted makes me feel unproductive which leads me to self-doubt in my decision. Hypothetically hurling a sneaker to silence the cranes would really be an attempt to control the uncontrollable and to constrict my focus on the negative.
However, by coming to this conclusion, I realize that I can embrace the unavoidable distraction as a reminder that while I make my plans, the world makes its own. The tighter I try to hold onto control, like grasping wisps of smoke, the more it slips from my fingers. Those crane-calls summon me to let go, roll with the punches, adapt, and come out stronger, determined, and when I see that the crane is actually calling to her two young chicks, remember to appreciate why I’m doing what I’m doing.