The Secret Element To Discoveries Is Not Curiosity

The only “wrong” questions are the ones we don’t ask.

Most of us can remember the reluctance we experienced in the classroom when we had to raise our hand to ask a question.

We fear the judgment of others.

We almost feel ashamed to tell in front of everyone we don’t understand or we simply need help to better grasp a concept.

This apprehension to look “stupid” or “not cool” (because we dared to interact with the teacher) is somehow deeply ingrained in us and leads us to stop asking questions.

Why are we doing things like this? Could we not try this way? See, like this, it just looks easier, faster, or even funnier — don’t you think? So why not give it a shot?

Maybe there is a good reason why.

Maybe this will make our work colleagues chuckle like it would have made our classroom friends laugh. We could appear “stupid” for a moment, but if we remain silent, we will be “stupid” forever.

But what to do if there is no one to answer our questions?

We have to figure them out by ourselves. And the first step to do so is to be curious.

The rover sent to Mars in 2011, which explored the Red planet for more than six years, was named Curiosity. When submitting this name to NASA, the twelve-year-old Clara Ma explained that curiosity is

“our need to ask questions and to wonder”1

helping us to push boundaries and expand the world we know of.

But to make discoveries, curiosity alone is not enough. When we ask ourselves a question, we need to have the audacity to look for the answer.

Is there water on Mars? Interesting question. That’s curiosity.

Spending 3.1 billion dollars to send a car-size robot on a 560 million km journey through outer space and land in the Gale crater which we believe could have been an ancient lake, 4 billion years ago2 — that’s audacity!

And audacity doesn’t stop at scientific experiments, it also applies to the interrogations we have about ourselves.

• What do I want to work on?
• Which activity do I want to explore?
• What is bringing me joy?

Beyond the questions and the curiosity they generate, we need to have the audacity to try, to find out our own answers.

Ingrid Bergman, one of the most iconic movie stars of the 21st century and a three-time Oscar winner, is an amazing example of audacity.

In her twenties, after dozens of roles in Swedish and German movies, she accepted to play in a Hollywood one. She barely spoke English and didn’t know what was waiting for her in America but she still decided to cross the Atlantic ocean, leaving behind her husband and daughter, to find out.

The movie was a massive success and instantly established her as a rising star. Ten years and many films later, she had won her first Oscar for Best Actress and was internationally acclaimed, but she started to feel like Hollywood had become a prison, slowly smothering her.

As she was exploring a new cinematographic style with the director Rossellini, she fell in love with him. Her affair caused a huge scandal in the United States, forcing her to leave for Italy. Far from being deterred, she kept acting throughout Europe, performing in Italian movies and French theaters, discovering more about her art and herself.

Seven years after her departure, she made a triumphant return to Hollywood with the movie “Anastasia”, her phenomenal talent winning her a second Oscar.

If we were to make a biopic about Bergman, many scenarists would be tempted to stop the film after this incredible comeback. After all, that’s the perfect hero journey. The actress said it herself:

“I’ve gone from saint to whore and back to saint again, all in one lifetime.”

But we would be missing one of the most important points her life embodied.

In one of her last movies, “Murder on The Orient Express”, Bergman was offered a leading role, that could lead to an Oscar, but she stubbornly refused3.

Instead, she wanted to play a smaller part she found much more exciting, including a challenging 5-minute long take. Her short performance displayed a wide range of emotions, stealing the entire show and winning her a third Oscar as Best Supporting Actress.

This decision was a perfect testimony of how she lived her life, with a constant curiosity to search for new opportunities, and the fierce audacity to go for them.

So how to combine curiosity and audacity in our day-to-day life?

One way is to notice the unfamiliar in the familiar.

Commuting to the office, let’s turn off the music and just look around us. If we are walking, what do we see? If we are on the bus, what do people look like? What are they doing?

What’s interesting here?

Then we noticed a new Thai restaurant, that’s something we could try.

Or we observe a passenger reading a book with a surprising title. We could order it or read a summary.

Let curiosity guide us to new grounds and audacity push us to play on them.

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If you want to know more on how to leverage your curiosity with audacity, without overthinking everything, register for my free workshop:?https://lisonmage.com/master-your-life-workshop-ld

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Sources:

[1]- Brown D.C and Buis A., 2009, “NASA Selects Student’s Entry as New Mars Rover Name”, NASA / Jet Propulsion Laboratory

[2]- Villanueva G. and others, 2015, “Strong water isotopic anomalies in the martian atmosphere: Probing current and ancient reservoirs”, Science

[3]- Chandler C., 2007, “Ingrid — A Personal Biography”, Simon & Schuster