On curiosity
“Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.” ― Roy T. Bennett
Good morning, beautiful people. It’s been a weird week; while Saint Louis is frozen, Los Angeles is burning. The comments on social media posts have ranged from the compassionate to the downright callous. I can only assume that the latter is driven from a lack of experience and an unwillingness to follow a simple mantra - “Stay curious.”
I’ve always loved to ask questions and understand how anything works - be it a machine, a process, or a person. Even still, many days I fail at keeping to this mantra; I resort to the efficiency of telling things I already know and forget to pause and ask clarifying questions to make sure that the information I am about to deliver is pertinent to the situation.
I take solace in knowing that, given how our brains evolved, most humans do this as well. It is, after all, more efficient (and therefore consumes less energy and calories). But that doesn’t change that when I choose speed over clarity, I am often wrong.
I keep hitting upon this truth “no one is in your head but you.” Staying curious fosters empathy over judgement; propels us to seek new experiences and knowledge over reinforcing our previous perceptions; and creates space for innovation over narrowing the world to absolutes.
Importantly, I can’t truly practice curiosity without also choosing humility. When I ask questions, I need to be open to hear any possible answer or learn any possible truth. Even ones that I may not at first agree with, align to, or want to accept.
Choosing to stay curious also means that I must actively prioritize the information itself over my possession of it. Put another way - I have to be willing to correct myself when I am presented with new information that changes what I previously knew. I have to value truth over being right.
As we head into next week, see if you can ask more questions than making statements. If engaged in a conversation where it’s clear the participants disagree, can you ask a question rather than make a statement? A simple one is “I’d like to understand why you feel/think/see it that way. Can you help me understand?”
