curiosity
How can you be curious?
What curiosity can you bring to your day?
How can you remember you’re still learning, and that is a good thing?
How can you remember there are a million beautiful discoveries — you are going to discover a million beautiful surprises still! — How can you remember those are coming in your story?
In Shauna Niequist’s book I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet, she writes about all of this and uses the phrase “I guess I haven’t learned that yet.” She says, “Oh my darlings, you’re not dumb, you’re new. We’re all new. And we’re not failing. But we’re learning, and it’s exhausting and humbling and fun and hard.” She writes, “I wrote that sentence [I guess I haven’t learned that yet.] because I wanted us to have a common language for what it means to be a learner, a beginner, to be curious and make mistakes and get back up. To ask questions and figure it out as we go.”
It’s a good thing.
Niequist goes on, “Not knowing something already doesn’t make you bad or dumb. It doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Not knowing something doesn’t mean you’re falling behind or fundamentally flawed, it just means there’s more to learn.”
“We’re talking about curiosity and freedom, but under these things what we’re talking about is self-compassion. Treating yourself with the same care and kindness you’d show to someone you love. This does not come naturally to me. I have a long history of saying things to myself, about my body, about my feelings, about my failures, that I would never say to another living human. Self-compassion is letting yourself off the hook, letting yourself be human and flawed and also amazing. It’s giving yourself credit for showing up instead of beating yourself up for taking so long to get there… The energy of self-compassion fuels so much more lasting change in our lives than shame or guilt or self-loathing ever could. We find the courage to change when we feel loved. It unlocks our ability to move forward and grow.”
Related: in a passage from Amber Rae’s book The Answers Are Within You, Rae urges us to be soft, saying being hard won’t take us very far. She wrote, “Life can either be a dazzling adventure or an arduous battle,” and you get to choose every single day.
So how can you bring your spirit of curiosity and compassion, knowing the hardships and challenges that are here don’t define you, they don’t mean you’re doing something wrong or dumb or falling behind, they don’t mean there’s anything going amiss in your life or with how your story is going to turn out… don’t let the struggles in your everyday life mean any of those things to you or about you. Because they’re not true.
…so instead, how can you bring curiosity and compassion to every moment?
You deserve curiosity for everything that’s unfolding within and around you. Curiosity as in: an open approach to learn more and to be okay with being a beginner. Curiosity to say “I wonder. What can I wonder today? What can I ask for help with today? What can I be a beginner in today?” Curiosity to look around and be amazed with whatever you find. Can you give yourself that freedom?
Shauna Niequist wrote, “That’s how it works. The changes connect and cascade, and the only way through it, it seems to me, is with curiosity and self-compassion, one in each hand, the tools for the journey. I’m not a natural at either one, although I’m learning to practice both with increasing regularity. There’s so much I don’t know, so much I’ve gotten wrong, so much I still want to learn and experience and understand as life unfolds. I keep moving forward, keep putting one foot in front of the other, holding tightly to the greatest gifts I’ve been given in recent years: curiosity and self-compassion. Apply as needed, over and over.”
❤
Curiosity is the path to learning and transformation. It’s also the path to self-discovery in a loving and effective way.
If we’re going to develop a lifelong love of learning about ourselves and the world around us, and if we’re going to cultivate wonder and space for magic in our lives, we’re going to need to stay curious.
