00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 103, "The Case for Curiosity." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

Alright, hey there, my friends, how are you doing today? I hope you are in a good place moving to a better place. That doesn't mean that everything is great and dandy and that you're happy all the time, but it means that we are managing our emotions, we're working through the tough stuff, we are working on strengthening our mental health and our emotional health and we're in a good place and growing into a better place. I know that's the case for me and I love where I am right now. I love the processes that I'm engaging in and how I'm growing. I've shared a few of those the last few weeks and just so thankful, so thankful for this place and for the opportunity to grow. 

01:10 

I know this morning when I was praying I started telling Heavenly Father, I said, "you know what, thanks for your patience," which is something that I've tended to say a lot. And I stopped for a second and it just hit me how patient God is with us and how patient He's been with me. I am learning things now about my judgment and my pride and these things that has taken me 52 years to learn, 52 years. And God has been patient with me all this time until I was in a place that I could see it and I could become aware of it and I could make it part of my learning process. It's taken me a long time to get there and it takes all of us a long time to get wherever we are. Wherever you are right now and whatever you're learning, it's the perfect time to do it. I look at my path to get where I am right now and it could not have happened with all of those difficult married years. It could not have happened without my divorce and with the processes that I've gone through since. I'm just so grateful for the timing of where I am and what's happening and what I'm learning and for God being patient with me, waiting for me to get to a place where He could start to teach me these things because finally I was ready to learn them. And I hope that you are in a place of being ready to learn as well, whatever it is that is is the next in your path to learn. So I'm hoping that what we talk about today will build on wherever you are and help you move to the next place. 

02:49 

So we're going to be talking about curiosity, and I have to say that this is my favorite word this year. It has come to mean so much to me. So, as I have been working this last year especially to be more curious, I am learning things about myself and about others that are so intriguing and so enlightening. And it's challenging the way that I look at the world and the people in it in a very different way. I'm starting to see things I never saw before. Here's something interesting to consider when we're pondering curiosity, because I know in your head this morning, you woke up and you thought, "hmm, curiosity, I'm going to ponder this for a second," right? Not that we usually do that, but let's look at it. 

03:33 

You know, remember how little kids are in this phase of constantly learning and progressing? And sometimes they'll come out with a phrase or a concept that just blows your mind. You're just like, "what? Where did you learn that?" And they're constantly asking questions about how things work and who people are and what they do and what that means. In fact, when you're hanging out with the littles, sometimes you feel like you're going to lose your mind from how many questions they ask, right? And their growth during this time is constant because they're always asking questions. They're learning so much about the world about them. And can you even imagine if we asked as many questions a day as these little kids, think how much we would know and understand about what's going on around us. 

04:22 

But what happens is that slowly the curiosity begins to work its way out of most of us as we become more adept at managing the world around us and we feel like we have a basic concept of how things work. We start to ask those questions and some people will argue that we educate curiosity out of our kids, and some will say it's just a developmental shift. But  whatever the real reason is, I would imagine it's a combination of the two, But we generally see a slow down in curiosity until even now in middle school, where I'm at most days, some kids have little to no curiosity. It has to do with music, movies, games, or pop pop culture, right? 

05:06 

So a few years ago I read a book, a really great book called "A Curious Mind" by Brian Grazer. And though I don't remember too many specifics at this point, I remember that I came away realizing how important curiosity is in our development and in our daily lives. And being a teacher of eighth graders, the whole time I was reading the book, I was thinking about them and how important it would be to help them activate their curiosity again. So for part of a weekly reading tracker that I used to do, we would have an assignment where they would get the iPads during a class period and they could research any question they had for the week. 

05:43 

So they would start off with one question and then they had to research it and find the answer. Then from that answer they were to find a follow-up question and research that, and so on until they had asked a total of four questions. And I was kind of excited about it because I thought, "oh these kids can learn about anything." I was teaching them about open-ended questions and not just like "what year did this happen?" But you know the hows and the processing of all that. So I was kind of excited. So it was a super easy assignment, I thought and one that my students hated. I'm not even sure "hated" is a strong enough word. They were being asked to think and be curious, and that is tough for middle school kids these days. But here's how easy it was supposed to be for them during the week. They could come up with any question they had about anything. I didn't even care. So let's say they watched a movie and they saw the White Cliffs of Dover in England. They could ask "why are the Cliffs of Dover white?" 

06:40 

So they would look it up, answer with three to four sentences and then they could ask three follow -up questions based on what they learned. They had to do this every Friday in class. It was super easy, or at least I thought it was, but the vast majority of my students had very few questions. They had lost the skill of being curious by the time they were 13. And yes, I do believe that curiosity is a skill. Some of my students, very few, got better at asking questions. But most of them would try and ask the same stupid questions every week. Okay, now I know some of you just called me out saying there are no stupid questions. But I, as an eighth grade teacher, I'm here to refute that there are and these kids knew that they were stupid. And this was the time when every week, every Friday, several of my students would ask the question "is water wet?" Okay, remember that phase a few years ago? It was a huge thing going on on Vine at the time, which was a little video app that they could get. And it was ridiculous because the kids were asking it just to be annoying. They knew that it was it was just a fad, right? So they were just doing that. 

07:53 

But even when I tried to encourage them to really find out the answer as to whether water was wet, they didn't care, really. They were just coming up with something they thought would be annoying so they didn't really try to find the answer. And after a couple of years of trying and tweaking that assignment, I finally dropped it because I could not figure out how to get the students to put any effort into it. It was such a great teaching idea that fell flat on its face. But I really bought into the idea of how important curiosity is. 

08:26 

But here's the interesting thing as I look back. At the time, it didn't really occur to me to apply this curiosity concept to myself. I could see how it would benefit my students to learn to be more curious, but I wasn't making a connection at all to how it could benefit me to be more curious. But now here I am revisiting curiosity in my 52nd, well, 53rd year, I'm 52, right? But this time, I'm working to apply it to my own life, and I'm seeing some amazing revelations come from it. 

09:01 

And I think this new phase of curiosity began when I started my certification classes with the Life Coach School a little over a year ago. As a coach, a huge part of what I need to learn is to be curious about my clients, asking them a lot of questions so that they can start to see their own mind, so I can help them to do that. And through this process, I've gotten a lot better at listening and asking questions. And then as I've worked on getting more and more consistent with my own self-coaching, I've learned to turn a lot of those questions back on myself. And it's helped me to really start to see myself more clearly, to see my mind more clearly, and to understand the thought processes going on in my mind. And this is where I've really started to 

grow and progress so much more quickly by getting curious about what I'm thinking and what I'm doing and why. So curiosity helps us to understand, and understanding ourselves better is paramount to growth, because curiosity cultivates awareness, and awareness is step one in any growth process. 

10:07 

So during this last general conference the first weekend in April, so it's a general meeting of all the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for those who may not be aware, I was listening to the talks and I found myself really drawn to the concept of receiving personal revelation. And I had some spiritual enlightenment that led me feel that I needed to strive to receive more personal revelation in my own life. So that same weekend I was doing some reading in a book called "The Infinite Atonement" by a man called Tad Callister. And in one of the first chapters he mentioned that the reason that Joseph Smith received so much revelation is because he was so good at asking questions. Elder Callister refers to Joseph Smith as the master asker. 

10:58 

So while sharing this insight with a friend, she shared a quote with me from one of Wendy Watson Nelson's books, and I don't know which one it is, I apologize, but it encouraged us to a 3-day challenge of asking a question during our prayer and then turning to the scriptures to find the answer. And it's always amazing to me how all of the right pieces to the puzzle end up in our hand just at the right time. And it was very clear to me that I needed to start asking more questions if I wanted to receive more personal revelation. 

11:28 

So most mornings I will come up with a question and pray about it, and then I go to the scriptures, and it's been amazing to me that every time I find some enlightenment to that question. I understand it better, it becomes more clear, and it's just been a very enlightening experience to feel as though I'm receiving so much personal revelation. And some of my questions have been personal growth questions, and some have been about how to interact with my children, some have been more doctrinal. But every time I find that when I start asking the questions, the answers are there to be found. Sometimes it's not even in the scriptures themselves, but as I will be reading, other thoughts may come to me that answer the question that may have something to do with what I'm reading or may not, but because I'm involved in the scriptures looking for answers, I receive the personal revelation that I need. 

12:24 

So that's been very empowering and amazing to me, and it reminds me of this statement about prayer that's found in the Bible dictionary that says, "the object of prayer is not to change the will of God, but to secure for ourselves and others blessings that God is already willing to grant, but that are made conditional upon our asking for them." The personal revelation is there and available to us if we will ask God for it. Curiosity is such a huge piece of this, and my spiritual and emotional growth through this has been exciting and often even very mind-blowing to me. 

13:01 

So another reason curiosity is such a valuable tool for us to use more often is because it really is the only way that we can come to truly understand ourselves, what we think and why, and how to move forward into a better version of ourselves. Because, as I mentioned before, curiosity cultivates awareness, and awareness is the first step in any growth process. And this is where the thought model has been so incredibly helpful to me. It has helped me to be more curious about the thoughts running around in my head that are creating so much drama sometimes. 

13:36 

So here's an example. A few weeks ago I was in a Zoom meeting with a large group of people, and the person in charge said something that really made me upset. Now, I am not a person that gets upset over things people say very often, so it was very uncomfortable to me. I was really feeling it. In fact, I started to cry and I ended up turning off my camera so that everybody wouldn't see me crying. And I for sure wasn't the only person who was upset by what was said, because it came up then in the meeting and it's come up since. And after the meeting I started to get curious and ask myself why it made me upset. And in this process I realized that I was feeling insecure and the thought that was creating the feeling of insecurity was that I was questioning my self-worth at some level. I was making the comment means something about my self-worth. And these thoughts were making me feel threatened. I was allowing my worth to become negotiable and it absolutely is not. And this was so enlightening to me when I asked myself why am I feeling upset, and I realized that it was coming back to a self-worth issue. My feelings were coming from my thoughts of "maybe I'm not enough, maybe I'm not good enough," and actually had nothing to do with the words that were actually said. 

15:00 

So remember the circumstance is neutral. What was said in the meeting was completely neutral. I only made it negative when I had the thoughts that I did, and discovering those thoughts of questioning my worth was incredibly enlightening to me in understanding patterns of thoughts that I tend to engage in. So curiosity in this instance really helped me to become aware of my own personal struggles with my self-worth, and that's super important because curiosity creates awareness and nothing changes without awareness. But there was another level of curiosity that I engaged in that also changed everything for me. 

15:46 

So once I kind of figured out that I was doing this and that I was that I was questioning my self-worth that really helped me to figure out what I needed to start focusing on and paying attention to. But I also at this point started to ask myself why that person would say that in the first place, and the answers I began to discover also completely changed my viewpoint of this other person. I went from being angry and frustrated with them to feeling compassion for them. Just being curious rather than believing my thoughts created a whole different experience for me. Compassion became my driving force for both this other person and for myself, and compassion moves me to completely different actions than frustration or anger does. 

16:38 

And then here's something amazing I figured out while talking through this with my coach. For me the opposite of curiosity was feeling threatened, defensive. When this experience first happened, I felt that my self-worth was being threatened. Like maybe I'm not good enough, right? And when I decided to get curious about it instead of wallowing in that feeling of being threatened, then the feeling of "threatened" went away and I was able to start seeing everything more clearly. So in this process, I've learned that for me, feeling threatened is the opposite of curiosity. When I feel threatened, I'm not curious. But when I'm curious, I don't feel threatened. When I feel threatened, I'm in a place of defense. I want to protect myself. When I'm in a place of curiosity, I become vulnerable and willing and able to see and understand more clearly. 

17:36 

So I want you to give this a try in your own life. The next time somebody says something to you or does something to you and you catch yourself wanting to spin into the defensive drama cycle because you feel threatened, I want you to slow down, take a step back and start asking questions. Get curious. Do a thought download if you need to. Sit down and write everything down and create your thought model. Start figuring out what you were feeling and what thought was creating that feeling. I guess I should say, what are you feeling right then? What thought then is creating that feeling? Once you've asked a lot of whys in there to understand your thought even better and you feel you're understanding yourself better, then turn it outward and start asking questions about the other person you are engaging with. Remember, that the words they say or what they do are 100% neutral. They go on the circumstance line. The circumstance is neutral. Now what are some of the reasons they could have said that? You may never know for sure, but the story you tell yourself will make all the difference in how you feel and how you act. 

18:53 

Okay, but this is also a chance to set feeling threatened to the side and engage in a conversation with that person, with you choosing to be really curious. Ask them questions, find out how they're feeling and why. Find out why they believe the way they do. Ask all the questions and then ask some more. Let your curiosity run rampant for a bit and really seek to understand the other person, their point of view, what they think, what they feel, what they do. You will be amazed at what you'll find out. And do the same with yourself. When you don't show up the way you wanted to, rather than feeling threatened or angry or frustrated, get curious instead. Why are you feeling the way you are right now? What thought is creating that feeling? And are you thinking maybe that you're stupid or you're ridiculous or you're inept? And then get curious about where those thoughts are coming from. When we take the time to get curious about ourselves, our thoughts and other people...everything will change. Our relationship with ourselves and with others will never be the same. Our feelings of frustration will turn to compassion. We will give ourselves and others the space to be human, to make mistakes, and to mess up. 

20:16 

Getting curious puts us in a place where we are empowered with information rather than feeling like a victim to what we don't know. So this is a great time in our lives to revert back to the curiosity of a young child. Ask questions all day long. Grow like a child by engaging in curiosity. What if you really started to ask you questions all day about why you were feeling the way you're currently feeling, why you just acted the way that you did, why you have the results in your life that you currently have. If we even started asking and getting answers to two or three of those kinds of questions every day, our lives would change for the better. Our self-awareness would increase and we would start growing more and more into the person that we want to become. We would start to understand ourselves at a greater and deeper level. We would start to learn who we really are and why, and we would step into the first and greatest step of growth, which is awareness. Because until we're aware, we can't change a thing. 

21:29 

Alright, I love growing up. I love this place where I'm out of getting more curious about what is going on inside my head and why I am thinking, why I'm feeling, why I'm acting, the way that I do. Why do I have the results in my life that I have? Curiosity, amazing. Check it out my friends, okay? If you would like some personal help from me figuring this out in your own life, this is what I do. I help my clients to develop more curiosity and help them figure out the stuff for themselves. So if you would like that, you can go to my website tanyahale.com. There's a place where you can sign up for a free coaching session. You can sign up at a time that works for you. Or if you want to get on Facebook, you can go to Tanya Hale LDS Life Coaching and there is a "book now" button. There where you can also sign up for a free coaching session. I love doing these coaching sessions. I just think it's amazing. I was working with a client this last week and it was just a short session like these 20 minute ones. And we hit a point where what she was able to start understanding about what was going on in her brain. It was mind-boggling. And I love, I love getting you to that place. I love getting you to a place where you're like, "whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, what?" And just seeing things and learning things about yourself that are going to change how you interact with the world and then change the person that you're becoming. 

22:59 

Okay, my friends, love you. Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for sharing this time with me and for trusting me with this 20 to 30 minutes of your life once a week. This is a great place to be. Life is amazing and so much to learn and so much, so much space to grow. Have a great week and I will talk to you next Monday. Bye! 

23:23 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!