Getting Curious Again: What I Learned Watching My Nieces at the Market
Getting Curious Again
I watched my nieces at the market last week. No plan, no destination, just wandering toward whatever caught their eye. They touched things. They took things apart. Five minutes after meeting a kid they'd never seen before, they were best friends. There was no outcome attached to any of it. They were just out to discover the world.
I don't remember the last time I did that.
Somewhere Along the Way, We Stop Asking
Kids don't care that they don't know something. They just ask. Then we grow up, and we start caring a lot about knowing. We want to walk into a room prepared. We want the answer ready before anyone asks the question. I do the same thing.
I've been turning this over, why that happens, and what we lose along the way.
Curiosity as a Way of Moving Through the World
When Kevin Armstrong came on the show, he told me to stay in discovery mode, to keep asking why. He was right. That's basically how my brain works: why, how, what's next. But the more I've sat with it, the more I think curiosity isn't just about wanting to understand something. It's a way of moving through the world.
Mel Wilhelmi is a good example. She'd hear about something happening in another department and ask, what are you guys doing over there? She wasn't mapping out a five-year plan. She was interested, so she followed the thread, and eventually one of those questions opened a door she hadn't seen coming.
Getting Curious About Your Own Life
Curiosity doesn't only point outward. Sam Bush taught me that. She went through a season where something felt off, she wasn't growing, wasn't learning, and what helped wasn't doing more. She slowed down and got curious about her own life, about the moments she'd felt most like herself, and started noticing what those moments had in common.
That's a gentler kind of curiosity. Instead of immediately deciding what a feeling means, you just notice it. That's interesting. I wonder what that's about.
The Stories We Mistake for Facts
Some of the limits we carry around are real. Life hands us responsibilities we don't get to wish away. But some of them are just stories we've repeated so many times they start to sound like facts. I'm too old for that. I'm not that kind of person. I've never done anything like that before.
Curiosity doesn't argue with the story. It just asks you to loosen your grip on it for a second and consider that maybe there's more room than you thought.
Kim Dallefeld's story is the clearest version of that I've heard on this show. She's lived through so many chapters, changes in technology, in role, in who she is, and she kept learning her way into the next one. Curiosity and resilience, together.
What I'm Asking of You (and Me)
I'm not telling you to blow up your life. You don't have to quit your job or move across the country. Find one place where your life has gotten very certain, and poke at it a little. Read something different. Ask someone a question you've never asked them. Talk to a stranger, or sit alone with your own thoughts if that's the scarier option.
You don't have to know where any of it goes. That's kind of the point.
Get curious about something this week. Follow a thread you wouldn't normally follow, and see what you find there.
Listen in to this episode:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4r0ndJ4PcYnOGsHdgRuj1Y?si=f2fa67776222433b
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/curiosity-is-a-way-of-moving-through-the-world-with-kcb/id1835167771?i=1000788295453
Listen on YouTube: https://youtu.be/XmUjHTqqnUg
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/H1D6BQej_Zg?si=ZQHXNFkTqMlwIk9M
I referenced several previous episodes in this week’s Coffey Talk:
Episode 27: Purpose Doesn’t Arrive All at Once with Sam Bush
Episode 29: Winning in Today's Marketplace: How to Stay in the Room with Kevin Armstrong
