“Curiosity killed the cat, you know.”
Some well-meaning parent, grandparent, family member, or friend said something like that to you at some point in your life. Maybe it was warranted. Maybe you were sticking your nose in someone else’s business and you needed to be put back in line.
But maybe a similarly well-meaning person hit you with a similar phrase when you wanted to stretch yourself. It might have sounded like, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” or “That’s crazy! What if you ________ (insert any number of dreamed up, potentially negative consequences)” Or the simplest yet most destructive, “Why would you want to do that?”
Well, Aunt Nancy, because I fuckin’ want to. 🙂
I’m not recommending that you swear at your family members, or even that anyone else is responsible for your mindset other than you. (YOU are responsible for your mindset.) But I am saying external negativity needles its way into our minds. And since humans have an evolved negativity bias, it sticks unless we have the skills to defend ourselves from it. Then our own proclivity for negative self-talk kicks in. We say nasty things to and about ourselves…and we listen.
We fear the curiosity we have for our limits. We stay in a comfortable world; one in which we know exactly what we can do. The cat is killed before it’s ever curious.
But there’s a second part to the idiom that people stopped saying. The full phrase is:
“Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”
It means that following your curiosity does impose risks, but that it’s worth those risks to know the truth.
It is worth the risks to know the truth about what you’re capable of doing.
The question is, how do you make yourself curious again? How do you get comfortable with not knowing and wanting to find out, and with being open to whatever it is that you find out?
Start by measuring the gain and not the gap. That means examining all of the things that you’ve done, not focusing on how far it is you have to go. When we measure the gain instead of the gap we make a momentum-building mindset shift. Our confidence grows.
In his book The Confident Mind, Dr. Nate Zinsser offers a drill he calls the Top Ten. He asks you to list the top ten accomplishments you’ve had in a given area of your life. In the book, he uses the example of a young golfer that he consulted with. The golfer listed, to date, his top ten golf accomplishments. Dr. Zinsser calls these moments deposits into your mental bank account. These deposits are the seed money from which your confidence sprouts. You acknowledge that you’ve already done some great shit.
Pause, and right now get out something to write on or in and list your gym Top Ten.
You now have in front of you evidence that you’re capable of action that moves you forward. It’s also evidence that you can act without being totally certain of an outcome. The list is likely filled with examples of things you did that you didn’t know that you could do at the time.
You are capable of curiosity and action in spite of uncertainty.
But what if you are certain about something that you want to accomplish? You know that you want to pass the 2,000m row test or broad jump over 8 feet. That’s great. Aiming with certainty is important because it aligns your actions. But you can’t be certain that you’ll achieve the aim. That’s also great. Why? Because you have an opportunity to confidently plunge yourself into the unknown.
It’s only good, however, if you keep yourself open. What I mean is that you have to be willing to try as hard as you can to achieve your goal while being open to whatever happens on the other side of your effort. You might fall short of your goal. But you also might far exceed your expectations. The only way to know is to focus on the doing and let the outcome be the outcome.
Satisfaction, then, is knowing that you did something. That good, bad, or indifferent you actually put in the effort to fucking find out, and you were open to whatever happened.
And we’re back to curiosity.
Dr. Zinsser coaches us all to stay confident and open with a phrase: let’s see how great I can do this.
“Let’s see” implies that we’re open to whatever happens.
“How great” sets a high bar for us to aim at.
“I can do this” sends us into action.
The statement engrosses us curiously in the process. We do the thing as best we can.
That’s it.
We’re satisfied with ourselves because we confidently threw ourselves into the unknown.
And no matter the outcome, we’re better for it.
