Good Life Project - Is Curiosity The Secret to an Extraordinary Life?

Episode Date: July 2, 2015

What if there was a single trait that was a virtual unlock key for an extraordinary life?Ok, maybe there's not a single magic trait, but there is something I've observed that seems to be omnipresent in the lives of those who live great lives.It doesn't matter whether, they're movers, shakers, artists, makers, scientists, educators, entrepreneurs, caretakers or anyone else. This one trait seems to be some kind of good life ignition switch.What is it? Curiosity.Turns out...Curiosity is a key driver of a life well-lived. (tweet this)And that brings up a question...Is curiosity a childlike state of wonder you are born with or can you develop the trait of curiosity by following a set of practices?The answer may surprise you. We dive into this question and come up with some eye-opening and actionable answers in this week's GLP Riff. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if there was a single tree that was a virtual unlock key for an extraordinary life? It's one of the questions that I've been exploring for the better part of my life. Now, I don't know if there's a single one, but what I can tell you is this. Over now hundreds of conversations with extraordinary people from all over the world, there is this one thing that keeps emerging over and over and over that seems to be always present in the lives of some of the most extraordinary movers, shankers, thinkers, doers, the people who have extraordinary impact on those around them. And it first emerged actually in the very first conversation that we ever recorded.

It was with Dan Ariely. Now, Dan is a world-acclaimed behavioral economist and professor. He's a guy who's written extraordinary books about how incredibly irrational we actually are as human beings. But it was something that happened immediately after that conversation that triggered this noticing in me that went a little bit deeper and became a pattern that I saw consistently emerging over the last few years with more or more people that I've had the opportunity to sit down with. So we were filming back then. So we started out as a web series before we moved to a podcast. So we had a whole crew that would film on location in New York City. And we'd set up and we'd have

lights and we have multiple people running cameras. And we were sitting there with Dan, and we had filmed this beautiful conversation. And Dan was incredibly busy. He was launching his book, or his latest book at the time. And I knew that he had to literally, he was leaving us, and then he was going, you know, he came from TV interviews, and he was going to another series of interviews where he would then get on a plane and spend the next week or so sort of country hopping and doing media. What he did really surprised me. So as soon as we wrapped, he took a look at one of the guys who was filming. And what he noticed was that one of our cameramen had ink. He had a fair amount of tattoos on a lot of his body. But most of it wasn't showing. It was covered up. But Dan was

really curious. So he walked over to the guy and he looked at his arm and he said, so tell me about this. And he started asking, not just about the ink itself, not just about the tattoo. He wanted to know what it was about. And he wanted to know the story, the story that the tattoo was telling, and also the story behind why the tattoo was put there. And then he didn't stop there. What he noticed was that the tattoo kind of followed. It wove up through this guy's arm. And truth is, all around his torso, telling a story. And Dan literally sat there and started tracing the tattoos. And he's kind of like, well, tell me about this one. And then he moves up and tell me about this one. And he's just looking and learning and he's fascinated. And he wasn't trying to start a conversation. He was genuinely curious.

He looked at this and he said, there's a story here. What's the story being told by the art that appears on this person's body? And then a layer deeper, what's the story that's being told that would lead a person to want to tell these stories by creating all of this ink on their body? He was fascinated by what the human motivators were that would underlie this desire. And he had this incredible conversation before then, you know, just sort of throwing on his shoes and heading out to his incredible media tour. Now, I thought this was really interesting because here's a guy who was in incredible rush to just sort of move on, yet he couldn't stop himself from expressing this deep curiosity.

And I kind of wrote it off at the point. I said, yeah, okay, well, that's kind of interesting. You know, here's a guy who's a researcher, a professor, and okay, that's kind of his job. But then an interesting thing started to happen. Over a period of months, and then over a period of years, I saw this exact same pattern emerging in some of the most extraordinary people that I've had the opportunity to sit down with. It's this intense level of heightened curiosity, not just in Dan, but across a wide range of researchers and individuals and entrepreneurs and artists and makers and just regular ordinary people who are insanely curious about life. individuals and entrepreneurs and artists and makers and just regular ordinary people

who are insanely curious about life. At one point, I actually had the opportunity to sit down with a guy named Chip Connolly. So Chip started a boutique hotel chain called Joie de Vivre. And he grew this to this incredible thing. And I was talking to Chip and he dropped this line, which really resonated powerfully with me. And we were talking about opposites and the expression or the idea of depression came up and how pervasive it is in our society these days. And he said something fascinating. He said, most people think the opposite of depression is happiness. He said, but my feeling is that the opposite of depression is curiosity. And the reason was that he said, once you become curious about anything, that triggers something in you,

it lights you up, it gives you a reason to invest energy and a purpose, a sense of meaning that really wars with the idea of staying in a place of futility. I thought that was really fascinating. And that just kind of swirled around in my brain. And I began to really realize that there was this common trait of curiosity that existed amongst many of the most successful, many of the happiest, many of the most fulfilled, many of the most satisfied people in life that I had a chance to sit down with. It was this ubiquitous pattern that I couldn't ignore. So of course, then the question pops into my head, well, is this curiosity, is it something that just exists naturally in some people and doesn't exist in other people? Or is it something that's

trainable? In other words, are you just a member of the lucky curiosity lottery club where, you know, if you land on the planet and you're born and you're just that person who wanders around curious about everything, you've got that lucky gene in you? Or is it something where that may be the foundation of it or it may not, but even if you don't have that, you can get it somehow. So I started to research this and there's actually not a ton of research on this, but I stumbled upon something that also took me a level deeper. And it was a distinction between two types of curiosity and they're known as state curiosity and trait curiosity. So what are those? So state curiosity could be described as sort of being in a state of constant wonder. You're the person who,

when you walk out the door in the morning, when you wake up, you look around and everything is an object of wonder. You're constantly asking questions of everyone you see. You're curious about the world around you. It's just the way you're wired. And very often, you're that way from the time that you're born, from the time that you're very young. Now, the other side is something that's commonly known as trait curiosity. Now, what's that and how's that different? Trait curiosity is when you are curious about a specific thing. This is when you have a burning question that you want answered. This is when there's a topic that fascinates or obsesses you.

This is when there's a particular thing or field of study or inquiry or quest that captures you and makes you curious. You must know about it. You could be curious about languages, for example, absolutely fascinated about the origin of languages and where it comes from. You could be curious about one particular field of mathematics or even a single problem or problem set. You could be curious about how a particular craft is brought to life or how to paint in a particular way. You could just be curious about human psychology and why people do what they do.

That would be a really interesting example of where we started, Dan Ariely. So the question then becomes, is that trainable? And in fact, what I've seen is that is very likely the more trainable of the two, state versus trait. So even if you're not the person who's dropped onto the planet, just insanely curious and wondrous about the world, then that doesn't mean that you can't then become insanely curious about particular things and then have that same incredible driver and sense of purpose around the pursuit of knowledge. So how do you actually get that then? Well, I think the way that it normally happens in most people's lives is through exposure

to a wide variety of input. So as you go through life, you get exposed to a particular activity, to a particular book, to a movie, to an idea, to conversations. So if you don't have that yet, then one of the really, really effective ways to see if you can find it is to create a very deliberate approach to exposing yourself to all sorts of new things. So part of my daily routine right now is that I wake up very early in the morning and before anyone wakes up after I meditate and very often after I have a cup of coffee or after I've brewed it, I sit and I read for anywhere from about an hour to two hours. That allows me to read two to three books end to end every single week. The level of input that comes from those books, my exposure to everything from spirituality to art to business to nearly everything that you could imagine.

I read across a wide variety of things and I do it very deliberately because I want to be exposed to things about which I don't have a lot of knowledge, because that helps me develop these burning questions, these deep fascinations with new topics. And what it creates is an increased amount of curiosity. And that curiosity makes my life exponentially better. So that's one thing that I strongly recommend. Find ways to expose yourself. Do more reading.

Listen to more things. Go outside of your normal topic. So if you always listen or read or watch things about a particular topic, very deliberately, constantly try new things, new topics, new ideas. Go take workshops. Go to events. Meet new people who do things that have nothing to do with anything that you have any knowledge of, and then just ask questions. Now, most of these things probably won't end up hooking you, and that's totally cool. But then you just might stumble on the one or two or three things that do. And when you do, life becomes that much more exceptional. There's another really kind of fascinating and fun thing that I've found to be a really cool generator of curiosity.

And it was introduced to me first by Rolf Potts, who wrote a book called Vagabonding. And he introduces this idea, and he's talked about it in other interviews that I've heard with him, called flaneuring, or as my... I'm completely bastardizing the pronunciation. It's something him called Flaneuring, or as my, I'm completely bastardizing the pronunciation. It's something more like Flaneuring. It's a French word. And essentially what it is, is it's going out and getting lost for the purpose of being lost. So you go to a

remote city or you go to your own town or you go somewhere and you walk out and you drive somewhere without a map and you just plop yourself down in a neighborhood or a place and you begin to wander. And the goal is not to be found. The goal is to be in a state of wonder while you're deliberately lost. Look around, observe, learn, have conversations. This is the beauty of moving from town to town. So right now, a friend of mine and his wife, so Scott Dinsmore and Chelsea, are traveling around, spending a year traveling around the world. And they're posting regularly about their updates as they

move down the Italian coast, just going from town to town slowly. And they're just getting lost. They're following trails. They're ending up at cafes they never knew existed. They're not trying to go from A to B. They're simply trying to be and exist in that state of questioning and wondering and connecting. Now, you don't have to go to the Amalfi Coast to experience this. You can do it in your own world, in your own life, five minutes at a time. So think to yourself, how can I just go somewhere outside, go to a block you've never been to, and just walk down a single block without the goal of trying to get to the end as fast as possible, but simply to be there and to open your eyes and to question and wonder. So I hope this has been an interesting conversation to you. I know the exploration of curiosity is something that's increasingly on my mind

as I see it continue to be the centerpiece of extraordinary living. If you've enjoyed this conversation, as always, I'd be so grateful if you just jump on over to iTunes and share a quick review. It helps more people find us. And if you found this really enjoyable as well and you feel like sharing it with friends, then by all means, go ahead, share away. Thanks as always for joining me. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. Thank you.