Cultivating Curiosity

Image Credit: Sandra Sietamaa

Last week we talked about the benefits that come from being curious. Curiosity is one of the reasons it’s so joyful to be around young children. Spend five minutes with a preschooler, and you’ll rediscover how fascinating the world appears through curious eyes.

Take four-year-old Ella. While on a walk with her dad one afternoon, she stopped every few steps to point out something new: “Why is that leaf shiny?” ,“Where do worms go at night?”, “How does the sky hold the clouds?”

Her dad laughed as the “why” questions kept building on each other. 

“Why does the sun come up?” 

He answered confidently, “Because the Earth spins.”

“Why does the Earth spin?” she asked.

He paused. “Because… well… that’s just what planets do.”

“Why?”

It’s easy to smile at her persistence, but Ella’s curiosity is exactly what fuels learning, creativity, and problem-solving.

As we grow older, we tend to trade curiosity for certainty. We come to accept “the way things are,” and our questions turn into conclusions. As a result, the world feels smaller. Not because it is, but because we’ve stopped looking at it with wonder.

In leadership, relationships, and personal growth, curiosity is the antidote to stagnation. It helps us avoid slipping into autopilot, inspires fresh approaches, opens our ability to make changes and strengthens our connection with others. Without it, we repeat unhelpful patterns. With it, we evolve.

The good news is that curiosity isn’t something we lose with age. It’s just something we stop practicing. Like any skill, it fades if we don’t use it and grows stronger when we exercise it. 

Here are a few concrete ways to keep curiosity alive in your everyday life:

Take walks. Research has proven that walking has direct and positive correlations with generating novel ideas and can help people get unstuck from traumatic experiences. When you walk, let your mind wander and allow yourself to notice your environment. 

Try new things. Curiosity loves novelty. When you try something new, whether it’s a recipe, a hobby, or simply a different route to work, you stimulate your brain. New experiences, even small ones, remind us that the world is still full of things we haven’t mastered or understood.

Play devil’s advocate. Ask yourself, “What if I’m wrong?” or “What would someone who disagrees with me say?” This moves you out of your typical thinking grooves and forces you to try on new perspectives. This strengthens your thinking by revealing blind spots and broadening your understanding.

Take breaks from technology. Curiosity thrives in quiet moments, but our devices rarely give us any. When every pause is filled with scrolling, notifications, or background noise, our minds lose the space they need to wander and wonder. Moments of stillness and even boredom invite reflection and imagination.

Engage with art. Visit a gallery, attentively listen to live music, or read poetry. Art invites us to give sustained attention to a creation, encouraging us to notice, question, and feel. Art reminds us that there are countless ways to interpret the same thing and slows us down long enough to see details we might otherwise overlook.

Ask more questions. Curiosity isn’t about having answers, but about loving the questions. Try replacing statements with inquiries: “What might I be missing?” “How could this be seen differently?” Questions keep us humble and open, reminding us that there’s always more to learn. (We’ll talk more about how leaders can effectively ask questions next week.)

Staying curious doesn’t require big adventures, just a willingness to keep noticing, questioning, and learning. Every day offers another chance to see the familiar with fresh eyes. Like Ella on her walk, we may never find answers to every “why.” Yet maybe the real purpose isn’t to find all the answers, but to keep our curiosity alive by asking.