Restorative Reminders
How are We Even Curious?
- Anugrah
What is Curiosity?
Curiosity is a deep and strong desire to know something or learn about something. It is our innate psychological trait to pursue and explore things.
Five Dimensions of Curiosity
According to a study published in Harvard Business Review, there are five types (dimensions) of curiosity –
- Joyous exploration,
- Deprivation sensitivity,
- Social curiosity,
- Stress tolerance, and
- Thrill-seeking.
They all equally involve a specific level of uncertainty, yet generate different types of experience. Joyous exploration is tied with intense positive emotions while social curiosity is connected with being kind and generous.
What does it take to be a Curious Creative?
1. The trick is that there’s always something significant, poignant, or poetic everywhere you look,… just looking at what’s there, without reflexively evaluating or explaining the scene.
– David Cain, How to Get the Magic Back
2. Another trick is by simply reducing the pressure of scrutinising and not trying hard to get it – none of us gets it about life, anyway. Instead, we are “supposed to look at it and notice the feeling it gives you. That’s it.”
3. Finally, we apply these ideas in our actual world. There’s always something that propels with some form of heavenly significance, even if it’s a simple every morning sunlight patch, a forsaken shopping list of papers, or a super ordinary dinner menu.
You, tell your adult-heavy rational mind to quieten, so you permit these silly ordinary things to let you feel what they are meant to. We are not created to figure out things all the time.
Who in his sense would not keep, if he could, that tireless curiosity, that intensity of imagination, that facility of suspending disbelief, that unspoiled appetite, that readiness to wonder, to pity, and to admire?”
―C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
Wherever you and I are placed we are obligated to keep innovating and not to discard the tireless curiosity. We don’t have to live like world visionaries. Yet, we can undoubtedly envision what we can be in the world which is tied up in this futile hamster-wheel-running pad.
What SPACE10 did to a large company we can do the same in our small lives – become curious and creative, make it our living culture.
We may be able to impact the work culture too.
Further Reading: Types of Curiosity
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