Let curiosity take the lead

I recently learned a new word: Informavore. It characterizes any organism that consumes information. You’re an informavore. I’m an informavore. In fact, all higher organisms are informavores. We are innately curious beings. We seek novelty and opportunities to explore everything from the vast reaches of the universe to the cellular mechanics of the human body.

Take your athletic passion, for example. When you first started playing your sport, you probably did so because it was fun. But then, what kept you going? It was likely a sense of curiosity. You were driven to explore what your body was capable of doing. You wanted to know what a certain athletic experience felt like. 

Fun was the spark and curiosity was the fuel.

But somewhere along the way, your ego mind got more and more involved and you started putting a heck of a lot of pressure on yourself to perform well. You tensed up. You obsessed over outcomes and you lost touch with curiosity.

Sigh.

It’s OK, though.

All hope is not lost.

Consider this your invitation to reconnect with your curiosity.

How can you become a scientist of our own athletic experience? Maybe start each day with “I wonder” instead of “I must”. Treat your sport like a workbench, where you can experiment with what works and what doesn’t.

Remember, curiosity precedes learning and learning stimulates growth.

Here are a few ways to enhance curiosity:

• Practice mindfulness. Immersing yourself in the present moment, without judgment, cultivates mental spaciousness - and that is fertile ground from which quality self-inquiry can arise.

• Embrace competition. You can’t learn from the game if you’re too nervous to get in the game.

• Consider the gap between what you know and what you want to know. If the gap is too big, you’ll feel overwhelmed and lose motivation to explore. If the gap is too small, you’ll be bored and give up quickly.

“I’ve started referring to myself as an explorer, because I feel like ‘athlete’ is too small for what I’m doing and what I want to do. Athlete is part of it, but it’s not the whole thing.”

- Rebecca Rusch, Adventurer/Endurance athlete

Leading with curiosity can unlock performance blocks. It can help you transcend your ego, which gets in the way of pure performance. It detaches you from results and encourages you to gain information for the sake of learning, rather than anchoring your performance to external rewards. It gives you space, which sparks joy and cultivates creativity.

Curiosity is an attitude adjuster. It shifts the way in which you engage with your work. Instead of approaching a challenge with trepidation, you boldly step into it, motivated by the desire to better understand yourself and the world around you.

As Irish writer, Robert Wilson Lynd wrote:

“There are two sorts of curiosity - the momentary and the permanent. The momentary is concerned with the odd appearance on the surface of things. The permanent is attracted by the amazing and consecutive life that flows on beneath the surface of things.”

See where your curiosity takes you. Perhaps you’ll uncover aspects of your performance - and yourself - that you didn’t even know existed.