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Babies only learn through trial and error. It’s how they discover their little hands and feet, or how they figure out they can crawl. They are constantly questioning their surroundings and their capabilities, and so they achieve again and again. We are there as proud parents cheering them on, not realizing that we have let go of the one crucial thing we came into this world with curiosity.
I have a lot of memories growing up where I can recall being so inquisitive. I’d study my mother and ask why she did things the way that she did, or I’d wonder why my body had to experience puberty.
Yes, we wonder things all the time, but the way we did it at a young age is not the same as we do as adults. Why? Because now we see things through a lens of judgments, not as they are. As children, we can consider things objectively. What I mean by this is, we haven’t yet been conditioned on how we should explore something.
When I was 24, I had a friend tell me about her journey with clean hair products. She explained to me how she researched all of the harmful chemicals in shampoo and conditioners and how she had started to make her own at home instead. At first, I was doubtful. How bad can it be? Then she started to tell me, and show me, how her hair improved after she made the switch, and I realized I had these very same problems with my hair. This conversation led me to ask a very important question to myself:
Could my current view on shampoo and conditioner be wrong?
I’m not even going to sugarcoat here – I became unhealthily obsessed with finding out.
This is the moment often referred to as “being cracked open.”
Yes, it’s just shampoo and conditioner we are talking about here, but really, I was in a state of exploration that was much deeper than that, I was questioning how I perceived my reality. It was really:
Could my current view on this topic be no longer true for me?
My lovely locks became the subject of my awakening journey, and I start to blog about my experience. This led me to change my stance on many other topics, and now I was feeling like totally woke babe.
I had switched all of my beauty products, and household products to organic, I went on a vegan diet.
Insert eye roll.
Then something happened – I was knocked off my high horse.
All of a sudden, my hair was so brittle and started to break. It was thinner and flat. I was mortified to think that I could be wrong about something I had spent so much time preaching.
Yet, this brought me to another, life-changing question?
Is it okay to pivot?
This allowed me to work through the limitations I was living in. My survival patterns of over structuring and controlling, and how they held me back from letting go.
I realized at that moment that we are often conditioned to think, if we don’t finish what we started or stay committed to something, we are a failure.
That’s not the case. We can try things, commit to things, even fully believe in things and then one day decide we don’t anymore.
This isn’t me saying impulsively try and drop things, this is me saying that when you are open to new information and that new information changes the way you feel about something, it’s okay to accept that.
Is there a right way at all?
Short answer? No.
Now if you’ve made it this far, I am going to poke the bear a bit more here – There is no such thing as right or wrong.
I’m not just talking about conceptual things; I am talking about any and everything.
It’s not a matter of something being right or wrong, because it just is.
When we can see things as they are, it becomes much easier to accept.
That’s the hard part, right? We don’t want to accept someone’s passed away or accept that the relationship is over.
But if we just accept it, even when we don’t like it, we stop taking it personally.
When we put things in buckets like right and wrong, we are putting what we believe on a pedestal and what we don’t believe beneath it. It creates friction, it insinuates division. These words, friction, division, are children of judgment.
We can have different beliefs, different standards while remaining on an even playing field. Please it or not, there is room for everyone.
Getting curious is an internal process and journey, and when we can embody the decision to inquire, we pave the way for other creators, inventors, and leaders.
