You are listening to the Overthinker's Guide to Joy, episode 11. This week I'm going
to talk about the importance of curiosity. Let's dive in.
Hey there, you are listening to the Overthinker's Guide to Joy. This is a podcast
for overthinkers, overachievers, perfectionists, type A, stressed out,
anxious people who just want to calm down and feel better. I'm your host,
Certified Life Coach Jackie de Crinis.
Hey there, welcome back. So today we're going to be talking about a really
interesting concept which I have been reading a lot about and observing a lot in my
practice and that is the subject of curiosity. Now I remember growing up with the
expression curiosity killed the cat and I think curiosity kind of got a bad rap.
The expression was intended to basically say mind your own business.
Stay out of other people's lane. Don't get too noisy. Don't ask too many questions.
And what happened was, I think curiosity became sort of taboo.
It turns out that the expression was not curiosity killed the cat.
The full expression of the idiom was curiosity killed the cat,
but satisfaction brought it back. isn't that interesting. They left that little part
out.
So I wanted to talk about curiosity today because in my coaching practice, we use
or I use a framework or a tool called the model, which I didn't invent,
but a lot of the coaches I work with use it. And the principle behind the model
is that our thoughts create our results. In other words, for people who are very
action -oriented people, I am one of them, list makers and overdoers,
and you always have to be in perpetual motion, you always have to be doing
something, you always have to be accomplishing something. It's very hard for people
like me and many of my clients to think that they just need the how to model.
They just need to know, like, what are the steps I need to take? What are the
steps I need to take to stop overeating? What are the steps I need to take to
stop over drinking? What are the steps I need to take to be successful in my
business? What are the steps I need to take to meet the right person, man, woman,
whatever? And they think there's a formula to everything because we were raised that
way, right? In grade school, there was kind of a formula to everything. You know,
we learn our ABC's and then we learn to read. We learn how to count to 100 and
then we learn to add and then we learn to multiply and then we learn to divide
and there's a right or wrong answer. For most of our lives, at least certainly
until we get to high school or maybe college, most things have a right or wrong
answer. Most things have a formula. And so we become very dependent on the how to
of everything. But as we get older, we come to realize not everything has an
operating manual. If anybody who's ever had a baby, you know there's no operating
manual. There's some guidelines. There's some helpful tips. There's probably a right
or wrong way to put on a diaper or a right temperature to, temperature to give a
baby a bottle. But the truth is, it's kind of the wild, wild west. There is no
operating manual to raising a baby, raising a child, developing a successful business,
having a successful relationship. There's really good tips. And there's all of this
amazing collective information. But at the end of the day, life is very much trial
and error. And certainly innovation is not an operating manual. It is about thinking
big and thinking abstractly and trial and error and tons and tons of failure.
So going back to curiosity, I went sort of full circle. So let me rewind there a
minute. I was talking about the model. And the model, again, is predicated upon our
thoughts create our results. And when we have nothing but negative thoughts,
like, "I don't know how to do that. I'm likely to screw that up. I've already made
too many mistakes. I've never been successful in that before. Nobody loves me.
My boss hates me." Whatever the circumstances that we have all of these negative
thoughts, it's very hard to turn or reframe.
And I'll talk about that in a later podcast, but reframe those thoughts to make
them neutral or make them positive. This is what negative rumination is all about.
This is what often keeps us awake at night when we can't sleep or what wakes us
up in the middle of the night when we're feeling anxious about a particular
circumstance. So, the idea of the model is basically this,
and I'll talk about it in more depth later, but everything is a circumstance. That
means everything is neutral, birth, death, life, divorce,
having a child, grades, your job, everything is neutral.
It's just a circumstance. And then it's the thoughts that we have about a given
circumstance that gives us a charge in our body. So like I said before,
let's just say you have negative thoughts about your job. Maybe you don't like your
boss. Your boss is a neutral circumstance. It's just a person. I don't know your
boss. Most of the people in the world don't know your boss. So they don't have an
opinion. So they don't have a feeling. But you do because you work with them 40,
50, 60 hours a week. So you have a lot of thoughts and feelings about your boss.
So when we notice those thoughts and feelings like he hates me, or I hate him,
or he speaks to me poorly, or he's irrational, or he's mean,
or he's inconsistent, or all the things. The feeling in your body is something like
frustration, anger, resentment, hopelessness. And from that place,
when you have these negative thoughts and then these negative feelings, what actions
are you likely to take? Well, those actions would probably be defensiveness,
apathy, you probably make more mistakes, maybe not intentionally, but you're,
you're so rattled, You're so walking on eggshells that you're so afraid of their
wrath or their temper or their dirty looks That you just keep making mistakes. So
even if you weren't making them before you are now So it becomes a loop and then
what's your result? I do poorly at my job My boss hates me or I hate my boss the
very thought that you had is The result that you get so So in other words,
again, to reiterate, the thought creates the result. So what we do in coaching is
we try to teach our clients that every circumstance is neutral and we break down
the circumstances. So rather than my life is terrible, which is a gross
overstatement, we ask, okay, well, what aspect of your life feels terrible?
And they might say, well, I hate my job or, you know, my children are difficult or
I have a badly behaved dog who pees on the floor all the time or whatever it is.
And we separate each thing out as a circumstance. We don't stick them all into the
blender, as I say. And so we deal with one circumstance at a time. And then we
look at what are possible other thoughts about that circumstance.
And it might be, Maybe my boss is going through a difficult time. Maybe my boss
has a illness. Maybe my boss just needs compassion.
Maybe I just need to talk to him. You start thinking different things rather than
the situation is hopeless. He's just a creep, you know,
anything that sort of feeds the monster. We start turning the thoughts. The idea is
to get to a place where you don't feel defensive, depleted, hopeless,
angry, resentful, right? We want to get to a different emotion. So one of the most
powerful feelings we can get is actually curiosity.
And there was a study done by Dr. Judd Brewer who is both an addiction psychiatrist
and also a mindfulness expert, where he talks about curiosity,
his words not mine, being a superpower. I know I say that word a lot, so I wanted
to make sure I credit him with those are actually his words. He says that curiosity
is a great way to get out of a negative feedback loop.
In fact, it's a phenomenal way to get out of addiction. And just to do a quick
sidebar on that, he talks about a lot of times addiction or addictive behavior has
a trigger, right? So I'm either happy or I'm sad. And then we go to a habitual
reward. So for example, somebody is feeling bad about themselves,
they were rejected that day, or somebody hurt their feelings. And if they're an
overeater, they're going they're gonna go have a bag of cookies or they're gonna
have a half a pint of ice cream or they're going to grab something that makes them
feel good. The trigger was that somebody hurt their feelings, that they're feeling
emotional. The reward is the sweetness or the buzz of something delicious.
So they've created that habit long ago and then that's been their go -to. And then
how we overcome addiction is not willpower because that doesn't work according to Dr.
Jed Brewer. But what we do is we start examining the trigger first before we go
for the reward. And then we also look at the reward about how does it really make
me feel. So in other words, if somebody hurts my feelings and my go -to is to have
a bag of cookies or to have a half a pint of ice cream. Does that really help?
Yes, in the moment, sure, sugar tastes good. It feels good. I feel soothed. But
then do I have a stomach ache? Do I get a headache? Have I gained weight? Am I
bloated? How do I feel about myself? And so rather than indulging in the reward,
we look at what doesn't work about it before we do the indulgence.
So we look at the trigger and then we look at the end result before we just go
for the immediate reward. And so we become curious about the trigger and we
recognize the trigger so that we don't then indulge in the loop.
We sort of go, oh, I see you trigger and I know what the end result is and
eating a bag of cookies is not going to make me feel good. And so when the brain
becomes disenchanted with the addiction, then we start breaking the loop and it takes
something like 10 or 15 times for us to practice this, to practice,
"Oh, that's the end result. I'm not going there." To refrain 10 or 15 times,
we break the loop. But he believes that all of that comes from a place of
curiosity, being curious about the trigger. Well, it's actually no different in the
model, which is the circumstances neutral. Something shows up. We don't like it. We
have all these negative thoughts about it. The well -worn pathway is to indulge
ourselves in the negative thoughts. Well, my boss is just an asshole, or I'm no
good at my job, or this always happens, or I'm just not lucky in the world, or I
deserve this kind of bad treatment. Whatever those negative thoughts are that are not
serving you, whereas if you can sit in curiosity,
either about yourself, like, "Do I need to think these negative thoughts?
Is there an alternative thought? Could I challenge the thought I'm thinking and
creating a feeling of curiosity, whether it's about the circumstance itself or whether
it's just about your own pattern of thoughts. But by remaining curious, we take
ourselves out of a negative loop. So what are some good questions to get us into
the feeling of curiosity. Well, one of the great questions is to ask yourself,
what am I afraid of and why?
It could be something innocuous, right? Like your friend doesn't text you back, or
the guy you went on a date with didn't call you back, or your boss didn't respond
to an email. We go down the proverbial rabbit hole of self -doubt,
self -loathing, we catastrophize, things when we don't like the immediate circumstance.
And so that's where the negative loop starts. But by asking yourself that question,
like, what am I really afraid of and why? Or do I know this to be absolutely
true? One of my favorite questions of curiosity is, what are the other explanations
for this? what are the other possibilities? So again, you can apply this to
anything. It can be personal, it can be professional. It doesn't matter. It's just
trying to get yourself unstuck from a loop that creates either anxiety,
stress, frustration, hurt, sadness, and curiosity will lift you out of that loop.
It is a feeling that we wanna create in our body by simply asking ourselves
questions or asking the situation questions of, is there just another possibility
other than the ones I have been thinking of? So try it on. Curiosity is kind of a
magical feeling and it's one that's available to you at Any time,
you can always choose to be curious. When you're feeling stuck,
curiosity is a great way to sort of break the cycle and get your brain going again
so that you feel like the world, as I always say, is full of possibilities.
And every situation is full of possibilities. and when you start to feel like things
are possible you'll find that you'll take more action towards changing the
circumstance.
So that's it for today. Again, as always, I thank you for listening. I hope that
you enjoyed this week's episode and all I ask is that you have a great week and
if things are getting in your way or getting you down, just get curious and see
what happens. All right, I'll talk to you next week. Bye for now. If you wanna
learn more tips about managing your stress and how to manage your overthinking brain,
just go to my website and sign up for my weekly newsletter at jackiedecrinis.com.
That's J -A -C -K -I -E -D -E -C -R -I -N -I -S .com.
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