Please Be Curious: You Don’t Know What You Think You Know

Author’s Note: Another excerpt from my book in progress, Mildly Creative: 7 Ways to Lead a Life of Quiet Inspiration.

Of all the character traits you could develop, outside of compassion, I’d rank curiosity at the top. In fact, I believe honest curiosity leads to compassion.

In his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey noted it’s impossible to judge and understand someone at the very same time. When we think we have all the answers about another person, when we think we know their whole story, we can label them and categorize them and write them off. But to understand them, we have to set our answers and our story aside, and to do that, we have to get curious.

When dealing with yourself, it works the same way. You’ve got to get curious. Otherwise, you think you know everything, and it becomes easy to dismiss yourself, devalue your gifts, and downsize your dreams.

You decide you could never do something because you’ve never done it before. You think you don’t have the talent, the strength, the stamina. You tell yourself you’re too uneducated or too educated, too young or too old, too fat or too thin, too much of this or not enough of that, and so you never try because you think you already know the outcome – failure.

But you don’t know what you think you know. All you really know are the stories you’ve been telling yourself. Stories, however, can be rewritten, and the moment you get curious, you begin a new chapter and start learning the real story. To do this, you’ll have to step into the unknown. That may frighten you, but it should also excite you, because the beauty of the unknown is that it’s filled with possibilities.

I’m not trying to tell you can have anything you wish for. I’ve never believed that and still don’t. I’m soon going to be 43 years old. I’m slow, can’t jump, and I’m under six feet tall. My chances of playing professional basketball in the NBA aren’t looking so good.

But I am trying to tell you that adding a little curiosity to your life and following it wherever it leads is far more interesting and rewarding than never attempting anything because you think you know the outcome. You don’t, and you won’t, until you explore, experiment, and experience.

So if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to send you on a journey. Your journey.

And that journey begins as a quest.

Next in the Series: The Quest Before the Mission

Previously in the Series: Start Asking Questions

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