HOW WE USE GENUINE CURIOSITY TO BE BETTER.

/ Be Better, Feel Better, Mindset / By

by Sylvie Manaigre

Remember the 80’s? I sure do. Probably because they kind of lasted until the late 90s for me (thanks to endless hand me downs and basic cable TV reruns). It was a good time filled with big hair, crazy exercise videos, magic 8 balls, Rubix cubes, and door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen.  We didn’t have smartphones, we couldn’t search google or ask Siri for answers. We played, we explored, we referenced books, and we listened to wise elders. 

Fast forward a few decades… We have more information and resources available than ever at the click of a button. Yet the technology we created to make us better, might actually be making us worse.  

Our environment has changed so rapidly; evolution cannot keep up with the new demands of our self-made environment. Read Mitch’s Blog ‘Were’ Losing it!’ for more about our ‘de-evolution’. 

 According to Wikipedia (today’s unofficial official fact reference); members of the ‘Internet Generation’. (a.k.a. “Gen Z”) tend to be well-behaved, abstemious, and risk-averse. Gen Zs,  live more slowly than their predecessors, they are more concerned about academic performance and job prospects. They have lower rates of teenage pregnancies and consume drugs and alcohol less often. They might be more reasonable and agreeable, but ‘Zoomers’ are also less happy, less creative, more prone to mental health problems, and are facing declining cognitive abilities.  Being overly connected and literally having ‘all of the answers’ in our back pocket can cause psychological issues such as distraction, narcissism, an expectation of instant gratification, and even depression. 

 Why It’s NEVER a ‘QUICK FIX’.

 The human body is not built from a professionally engineered blueprint, but rather is a system shaped over long periods of time by evolution with all kinds of trade-offs and imperfections. Understanding the evolution of the human body can help us better understand our bodies and how to properly care for them.  Unfortunately, we can’t just copy and paste our genetic code to upgrade our system. (Well there’s  CRISPR-Cas9, but that’s a whole other mind-blowing human innovation that we won’t understand the repercussions of for decades to come…)  

So how do we use genuine curiosity to move and feel better?

It’s not about what we do, it’s about how we think. We don’t let our biases (conscious or unconscious) from our worldview get in the way of the facts. We love this example of genuine curiosity by people’s “sexiest astrophysicist alive” Neil deGrasse Tyson. 

If someone comes up to you and says, “I have these crystals. If you rub them together, it will heal your ailments.” I don’t want you to say, “Oh, that’s bunk.” No. Because extreme skepticism, such as that, and extreme gullibility are two equal ways of not having to think at all. And I don’t think I’m the first to say that.   So the thought is — what’s your next thought when someone approaches you with the crystals? It should be, “How does that work? How do you know it works? By what mechanism does it work? How much does it cost? Where did you get the crystals? What evidence do you have that it would work on me?” Start asking questions. And people who are just charlatans out there, or are self-deluded, you’ll reach a point where they don’t have answers to those questions, because if they did, they wouldn’t be trying to sell you crystals.

We will never try to sell you crystals. You shouldn’t either. 

The instant validation that we can now receive from our followers, peers, news feeds, and our previous lived experiences, often (mistakenly) leads us to believe that we are right, and allows us to pass the blame without any guilt or sense of accountability. 

When we’re pretty sure, ask more questions. Explore more. Make more mistakes…

“I’ve seen my physio/chiro twice and I’m not getting better”.  

  • Have I been honest with my therapist? 
  • Have I listened/done my homework? Consistently? 
  • What other factors do I have control over that could help me get better.

“I am just not built to be a runner”

  • What is a runner built like?
  • What if I actually was built to be a runner?
  • What do I have to do to become a runner?

We cannot unbiasedly self assess without genuine curiosity.  It’s not easy to remember to go deeper.  To consistently ask the right questions, so we can take the right action to move better and feel better.  Look out for two new helpful Move Better Health & Performance tools launching soon.  

  • The ‘Move Better 7 day self-assessment’

  • The ‘Move Better Health & Performance Cahier’ (daily planner).

 

References