Welcome to the Good Life Chronicles, where living a good life takes center stage.
Despite what you hear on social media, one of the most useful and effective happiness skills isn't optimism, gratitude, or mindfulness.
It's curiosity.
(I bet you’re curious now!)
And yet, curiosity rarely appears in conversations about wellbeing, which is strange because it solves so many problems.
Curiosity makes us less judgmental; instead of thinking, "That's ridiculous” and close the conversation, we ask, "I wonder why that person thinks that?"
Curiosity makes us better conversationalists; instead of waiting for our turn to speak, we become interested in the answer and ask another follow-up question even if we have things to say.
Curiosity helps relationships; it reminds us that people continue changing long after we've decided we know them. All we need is to ask the questions their friends and colleagues would.
Even curiosity about ourselves can be useful.
Why did that upset me?
Why did I react that way?
What am I avoiding?
What do I actually want?
How might things change for me if I said yes more often?
Curiosity creates psychological flexibility, which especially matters when the world feels so out of control, or worse, when we feel too much in control.
Curiosity can keep life and its options open. But without it, we become fixed in our views, habits, and routines. We start assuming we've figured things out and there is nothing new to learn, adjust to, and incorporate into a new version of ourselves. Using AI might even make it worse; it most certainly never disagrees with us, which only reinforces the illusion of flexibility and “I got this” even more.
To combat this cognitive fixedness, I’ve recently started inviting people I barely know to informal Saturday gatherings. Some are from LinkedIn. Some work in industries I know nothing about. Some I met during the week at the gym. (Want to be included? Drop me a line; they are open to anyone).
And the point of this Saturday meetup activity isn't networking, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. It’s about exposure to new ideas and perspectives, as much as new ways of seeing the world. There is no set agenda, I let people introduce themselves. Everyone knows the goal: to meet and consequently, grow. And every curious conversation that transpires leaves us a little different from when we arrived.
A Good Life is much more than simply collecting experiences, even if they feel good and do good. A Good Life is also about remaining interested in people, ideas, places, including ourselves, to avoid what many confuse with certainty, which is actually stagnation.
And stagnation rarely makes for a good life.
Are you curious enough about life these days? What’s topping your list?
Share it in the comments here or below depending on your platform. Remember to sign in to leave a comment.
While you’re here!
If you like the idea of happiness and feel someone in your life should too, pass along this newsletter. They can sign up here.
Why not learn the skills of good living for yourself? Sign up to my course here, you can also “gift” the course to others.
Finally, do you work somewhere in the GCC that could use a little uplifting? See my programs for organizations here.
Have a great week and remember...
Life is short, what you do with it matters.
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