Curiosity Archives - Farther to Go!

Guidelines for a Growth Mindset

February 25, 2021 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Even if you recognize the considerable benefits of developing a growth (or get better) mindset, you may not be sure what steps to take or what to focus your attention on to shift your mindset.

My recommendations are:

(1) Understand the differences between the growth and fixed mindsets. You can read this article, find information on the internet or from Carol Dweck’s book Mindset, or get a quick take from this infographic.

(2) Try to identify where in your life you operate primarily from a growth mindset and where you operate from a fixed mindset, so you can get a sense of the difference in perspective and outcome. You can use this handout for that.

(3) Incorporate the Guidelines for a Growth Mindset:

Develop your curiosity.

Curiosity keeps us engaged in exploring our inner and outer worlds. Curiosity causes us to ask questions, not necessarily to get answers, but to arrive at even bigger or deeper questions. It opens our minds and expands our perspective, which is what a growth mindset is all about.

Identify and pursue juicy desired outcomes.

If you want to expand your world, you need to choose worthy targets to aim for. The brain is an insatiable wanting machine, and dopamine is the wanting neurochemical. The bigger and juicier the desired outcomes you give your brain to pursue, the more dopamine it will release, and the more creative tension it will generate.

Run toward challenges instead of away from them.

Challenges can be expansive, too, if we are not afraid of them. Anything we haven’t done before or that requires effort or deliberate practice to accomplish takes us out of our comfort zone. But continually seeking out challenges ultimately expands our comfort zone, and trains our brain to assist us in mastering the unfamiliar.

Recognize that failure and success are equally transitory, but you only learn from failure.

Richard Saul Wurman is an architect and the founder of TED Talks. He said it better than I could: “I have failure every day. I know that I will not grow at all except by understanding my failures. Success tells you nothing; you learn nothing from success.”

Follow the path of the trickster.

Trickster is at home in liminal space, the space of possibility and uncertainty. In fact, trickster represents the opposite of a fixed mindset, avoiding staying in one place too long and preferring to be on the road, out and about, engaging with the world. Trickster keeps it light, but always has a juicy desired outcome to pursue. If he or she fails today, well there’s always tomorrow to try again.

Click here to print or download the guidelines.

Hunting for Foxhogs,
I Find a Foxcat Instead

September 10, 2020 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

In the last chapter of Curious, Ian Leslie lays out “seven ways to stay curious.” Item number three on the list is “forage like a foxhog.” The foraging he refers to is for information. The question under consideration is whether it’s better to have a depth of knowledge (specialize) or a breadth of knowledge (generalize).

Eventually he connects these two approaches to a quote from Greek poet Archilochus:

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

Leslie suggests that these animals represent two different ways of thinking, neither of which is really better than the other: the hedgehog knows a lot about a little, while the fox knows a little about a lot.

The thinkers best positioned to thrive today and in the future will be a hybrid of these two animals. In a highly competitive, high-information world, it’s crucial to know one or two big things and to know them in more depth and detail than most of your contemporaries. But to really ignite that knowledge, you need the ability to think about it from a variety of eclectic perspectives and to be able to collaborate fruitfully with people who have different specializations. —Ian Leslie

So by combining the fox and the hedgehog, we get the “foxhog.”

Leslie devotes six pages to this discussion, at the end of which I was not entirely clear about the distinctions he was making beyond specialization vs. generalization. So I did a little research of my own.

Assumptions Were Made (but not by me)

The first thing I discovered was that this concept of the hedgehog and the fox is fairly widely used. That was a little surprising. Also surprising was the fact that although people seem to have definite ideas about what the concept means, it doesn’t appear to mean the same thing to everyone.

I listened to a 38-minute podcast of The Hidden Brain titled The Fox and the Hedgehog, which I found interesting and worth listening to. But it did not advance my understanding at all.

It turns out that Archilochus may have been the source of the quote, but we have no elaboration from him on its meaning. That credit goes to philosopher Isaiah Berlin and his essay The Hedgehog and the Fox published as a book in 1953. It was Berlin who first classified various philosophers, writers, and scientists as either hedgehogs or foxes. But the focus of the essay was Leo Tolstoy, who Berlin conceived of as that hybrid creature, the “foxhog” (although he did not, of course, use that term).

According to Berlin, Tolstoy was really a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog, and this internal dissonance was a source of distress to him. That would make Tolstoy a bad example of a “foxhog,” but Leslie does give us a few positive role models.

After checking out Berlin, I understood that Shankar Vedantam (the Hidden Brain podcast) had based his understanding of the concept of the hedgehog and the fox on Berlin’s essay. But other people had somewhat different ideas, and I was still trying to understand it in terms of types of thinkers—or leaders—or learners. The characteristics associated with foxes and hedgehogs by various proponents didn’t really hang together.

Enter the Foxcat

Eventually, I came across a different perspective based on an Aesop’s fable. It turns out there is a fable titled The Fox and the Hedgehog, but the moral of that story doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what Berlin or Leslie or any of the others are talking about. The fable that does connect is The Fox and the Cat.

This fable sees the fox and cat discussing the various tricks and dodges they know: the fox has many, while the cat says he has just one. The fox appears to have the advantage, until a pack of wild dogs attacks them both. The cat’s one bright idea—climb a tree to get out of harm’s way—rewards him by saving him from the dogs, while the fox—busy chewing over which of his bright ideas to act upon—remains rooted to the spot and is torn apart by the hounds.

Clearly there’s a moral there: act quickly and decisively when you have to, rather than endlessly turning over the various options in your head. —interestingliterature.com

In this story, the fox represents System 2, conscious processing, which allows for more possibilities but is also slow and energy intensive. The cat represents System 1, unconscious processing, which is fast because it acts based on habit and instinct: what worked in the past. (I especially like this because I frequently use my cat as an example of a creature who acts exclusively on System 1 impulses.)

Is There a Moral to This Story?

Neither the fable of The Fox and the Hedgehog nor the fable of The Fox and the Cat are directly relevant to Leslie’s idea about foraging for information. (I don’t think they’re relevant to Isaiah Berlin’s ideas about Tolstoy, either, but that’s another rabbit hole.) In terms of staying curious, I definitely agree with Leslie that breadth is as important as depth. “T-shaped knowledge” combines specialization (the vertical axis) with broad understanding in other areas (the horizontal axis).

The same could be said of System 1 and System 2 thinking: one is as important as the other. It’s important to know when to apply logical, linear, critical thinking and when to allow unconscious associative thinking.

But the moral of the story is that there’s no good reason for us to believe that we know what we’re talking about—or what anyone else is talking about, for that matter. We take the world at face value when we ought to question our assumptions.

Sure, curiosity may have killed the cat. But satisfaction brought it back.

Building Blocks of Creativity: Curiosity

June 8, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

If we really want to understand and shape behavior, maybe we should look less at decision-making and more at curiosity. —David Brooks

Having an open mind and being open to experience go hand-in-hand. And if you’re open-minded, you’re curious. You don’t believe that what you know about something—anything—is all there is to know. You want to explore and you want to learn more. You’re not afraid to put yourself in unfamiliar situations or to expose yourself to people and ideas that challenge you or your beliefs.

Curiosity, by its nature, implies uncertainty and ambiguity. Your brain doesn’t like uncertainty, which is why the experience can be uncomfortable. But if you choose comfort and the illusion of certainty (because certainty is an illusion) over curiosity, you’re turning your back on the very characteristics that make humans human.

Besides, curiosity can also be rewarding. Mario Livio, astrophysicist and author of Why? What Makes Us Curious? says:

[The] lust for knowledge is associated with a pleasurable state, and in our brain activates regions that anticipate rewards.

It makes sense that curiosity activates reward pathways in our brain. Curiosity and openness to experience give us the ability to be inventive and creative, to solve complex (sometimes life-or-death) problems, to imagine things that don’t yet exist, and to accomplish great undertakings in the face of enormous odds.

Curiosity is the essence of human existence. ‘Who are we? Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?’… I don’t know. I don’t have any answers to those questions. I don’t know what’s over there around the corner. But I want to find out. —Eugene Cernan

Curious, open-minded people see the world differently from other people, both literally—in terms of basic visual perception—and figuratively. They tend to screen out less visual information, so they sometimes see things others block out. And they “see” more possibilities as a result of being divergent (rather than convergent) thinkers.

Are You Intentional?

In order to be creative, we need to be able to change something in the world. But we also need to be able and willing to be changed by the world.

Of course, to a great extent we do create our own reality, so our interactive relationship with the world could be said to be creative. But the reality that we create for ourselves happens outside our awareness and outside our control. It’s pretty amazing, but we can’t take credit for it. It doesn’t require anything from us, and we can live our entire lives taking it for granted, having no curiosity about it and paying no attention to it whatsoever.

If you have no curiosity about yourself and your relationship with the world, you may want things to be different, but you’re unlikely to engage in the cognitive investigation and exploration that can lead to creativity and change. So you’re unlikely to do anything to change the status quo.

If you’re curious, however, the questions are more interesting—and more alive—than the answers. As a result, you never stop exploring. You take very little for granted. And you’re intentional about changing your brain, yourself, and your world.

Do You Want a Resilient Brain?

March 18, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

The greater your cognitive reserve, the more resilient your brain will be. Brain reserve—or cognitive reserve*—helps your brain adapt and respond to changes and resist damage. It gives it the ability to improvise and find alternate ways of doing a job or performing a task.

Your cognitive reserve begins to develop in childhood and gets stronger as you move through adulthood. If you continue to learn, embrace new activities, and develop new skills and interests, you will continually build and maintain your cognitive reserve.

This is another reason to aim for challenging yourself rather than taking it easy and following the path of least resistance. You don’t know when you’re going to need your cognitive reserve, so it’s good to have as much of it as possible “in the tank.”

Protection from Damage

The concept originated in the 1980s. Researchers discovered that some people who were found at autopsy to have brain changes consistent with advanced Alzheimer’s disease had displayed no apparent symptoms of dementia before they died. These individuals had enough cognitive reserve to offset the damage to their brains to allow them to continue functioning as they always had.

Cognitive reserve can also help stave off degenerative changes associated with other brain diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or a stroke.

Even if you’re fortunate enough to never experience any of these diseases, you can still benefit from developing cognitive reserve. It can help you function better—and for longer—when you experience unexpected and stressful life events, which tend to require more effort from your brain.

You can’t prevent yourself from aging or insulate yourself from all stressful, unexpected, or life-altering events. You don’t have total control over what kinds of diseases or deficits your genes might predispose you to develop. But you can do something to moderate how much these challenges affect you, your well being, and your ability to function.

Learning, Curiosity, and Dopamine

Even if you don’t develop neurological or psychological disorders, brain circuits that rely on dopamine tend to decline in function with aging. But curiosity prepares your brain for learning by activating the reward system, enhancing memory and motivation in the process. When you’re learning something you’re deeply—as opposed to idly—curious about, you’re more likely to recall and retain what you learn about that topic. You’re also more likely to retain unrelated information you encounter at the same time.

Curiosity may put the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain any kind of information, like a vortex that sucks in what you are motivated to learn, and also everything around it. —Matthias Gruber, UC Davis Center for Neuroscience

Curiosity, challenge, and complexity seem to define the path that leads to strong cognitive functioning and a more active and enjoyable life now—and to greater cognitive reserve whenever you may need it.

Have your education, work, and leisure activities challenged you over the years? If so, they have contributed to your cognitive reserve. If not, there’s no time like now to reverse course if you want to do as much as you can to maintain your memory and your cognitive skills for as long as you can. Engaging in a variety of activities—physical, mental, and social—with differing levels of complexity have a synergistic effect. So the more things you do in these areas, the better—for both you and your brain.

*“Brain reserve” is sometimes used to refer to physical changes in the brain such as an increase in neurons and synapses (aka the “hardware”). “Cognitive reserve” is sometimes used to refer to the brain’s capabilities and skills in regard to completing tasks, learning new things, or recall (aka the “software”). These distinctions are really two sides of the same coin, and research is currently being conducted on the relationship between them.

Curiouser and Curiouser

April 11, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

In his book, Waking Up, Charles Tart points out that most people, especially in the West, aren’t taught self-observation skills at an early age. What if we had spent as much time learning how to observe ourselves as we spent learning how to read?

I’m a fanatical reader, so I don’t say this lightly, but maybe self-observation skills are even more valuable than reading skills. In many ways, reading helps open up the outer world to us, but self-observation opens up our own inner world—which is no less vast, really.

These are a few things Tart has to say about self-observation.

It’s All Grist for the Mill

In its most general form, the practice of self-observation is simply a matter of paying attention to everything, noticing whatever happens, being open-mindedly curious about all that is going on. This everything will almost always be a mixture of perceptions of external events and your internal reactions to them. You should drop all a priori beliefs about what you should be interested in, what is important and not important. Whatever is is an appropriate focus for observation.

Three Ways to Pay Attention

This open-minded attention must be more than just intellectual attention. Remember that we are three-brained beings. Thus the attention we should strive to pay to our world and our selves is an emotional attention and a body attention as well as an intellectual attention.

Above All, Be Curious

The practice of self-observation…is the practice of being curious, along with a commitment to do your best to observe and learn whatever is there, regardless of your preferences or fears.

I have to keep reminding myself to stay curious about what is going on around me and within me. And also to stay curious about my own actions and reactions. It’s so much harder for me to get sucked into the drama, the compulsions, and the autopilot behavior when I’m able to maintain an attitude of curiosity about everything that’s happening.

My usual modus operandi is probably the same as everyone else’s. I operate on the assumption that there’s a way things should be and when things are going the way they should be going, all’s well. But more often than not, things do not go the way I think they should. And people do not behave the way I think they should. Even I don’t behave the way I think I should. And don’t get me started on the weather!

As an 8, when things are not going as I expect them to go, my resistance kicks in. That’s a perfect opportunity to wake up and pay attention. When I’m able to do that, I feel much lighter and more expansive. When I don’t or can’t do it, I dig myself deeper into my resistance. No good ever comes of that.

What kicks in for you when things aren’t going your way?

If I want to use the moments when my expectations rub up against the edge of reality to wake up, I have to have the intention to do so.

The practice of self-observation begins with a desire and resolution on your part: “I want to know what really is, regardless of how I prefer things to be.”

As per my previous post, self-observation is not for wimps. It isn’t easy to let go of our preconceived ideas about how the world should work. It’s hard to give up having a temper tantrum when we don’t get our way. Growing up can be painful at times.

If you diligently practice self-observation, you will see much that his painful and much that is joyful, but seeing more of reality will turn out to be highly preferable to living in fantasy. You will begin creating “something” in yourself, a quality, a function, a skill, akin to learning how the controls of your automated airliner work. And you will be pleasantly surprised at how much more there is to life.