Stop Age Gating Curiosity
Recently, I’ve been double-clicking on the feeling of “I’m curious about…” This has led to tremendous progress in self-discovery and purpose. I initially heard this concept in a podcast by Rich Roll, where he interviewed a man who’s been living out of his backpack for 5 years. He talked about his advice for people trying to understand more about their deeper purpose and discussed this feeling of curiosity and how we’ve forgotten how to sense it. This tends to happen after we hit adulthood and are on these “career” or “life tracks” prescribed by society or upbringing. He feels these tracks are misleading for most and don’t lead to happy, fulfilling lives. If you're interested, I highly recommend listening to the full episode: Rich Roll Podcast.
Anyway, my point in this post is to question age and some of the stigmas around trying new things at a certain age. It seems like our culture often looks down on people who try new things, especially around midlife. This makes me a bit insecure about trying new things and also just moving in a completely different direction with my life and career. Why do we put up these rules or guardrails when we know transitions typically happen every decade, and that’s okay?
Another thing I’ve noticed is I’ve become incredibly boring (this is obviously subjective), but I used to be very spontaneous and fun. This realization came up when I listened to a recent Mel Robbins podcast where they talked about the neuroscience behind habitual behavior and how it leads to stagnation and a lack of fulfillment. Our brains were designed to seek new, novel things like finding new sources of food and shelter. When we aren’t seeking new things, our brains become discontent. There’s a much more complex and detailed explanation in the podcast, but that’s what I got out of it. She mentioned that this typically happens in middle age (surprise!) and this “habituation,” as she calls it, occurs because we’ve made a lot of our big life decisions by this point and are quite content. So, we have to make a much more conscious effort to break out of our routine than we did when we were younger and forced to adapt due to circumstances. Again, my point here is to explain why these things are happening. Mel Robbins Podcast.
So here’s the gist of what I got from both of these interviews: we need to be curious because our brains really want to find new things. New things excite us and make us feel happy, regardless of age. Culture and society are often at odds with our biology, and we have to make a concerted effort to carve out time and energy to push back against it. Here’s a consolidated blend of what I think they both recommend:
If you’re curious about something, do it. Try it, go there, dig into it. This requires practice because, as I mentioned, we’ve forgotten how to be curious. You must do this constantly to rediscover it.
We are most excited one day before a trip and peak four days into a trip. To optimize this, you should go on lots of long weekends to new places.
Break habitual thoughts and routines. Take a different route, drive a different way home, shift your schedule slightly to do new things during the daily grind, eat somewhere new, rearrange your furniture, etc.
There’s a lot more great content, so I highly recommend listening to them, but that’s what I got out of it. I’ve been planning things like going to a concert during the week, finding new places to eat for dinner, cooking new meals at home, starting small projects, and being creative (we just started making beaded necklaces and weaving with hemp).
I’ll leave you with these quotes from my favorite account, americanbaron, from a recent post:
“The cure to my sickness was to make something right now, with great creativity and vengeance.”
“I thought being good at something was when other people thought so. It took me a few premature gray hairs to realize that being good at something is simply to enjoy doing it.”
