Ep. 40 – Curiosity
5 Minute Rants by THE a.m.
A podcast predicated on the journey of business and life.
Ep. 40 – Curiosity
Curiosity is a sign of intelligence and should be celebrated.
“Why” is a powerful word.
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Curiosity is a sign of intelligence and should be celebrated. “Why” is a powerful word. Episode Transcript. […]
July 23, 2023
Episode Transcript
Michael Abernathy 0:00
Hey what’s up? What’s up? What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m. guys. Welcome back to the show. I really appreciate y’all tuning in. Thanks for supporting and thanks for tagging along on the journey, guys. So let’s jump straight on to this 5 Minute Rant. See what I did there?
Anyways, guys, all right. I really want to talk about curiosity today. I think curiosity is something that is heavily underrated. I think curiosity is actually not really shunned in society, but it’s definitely not celebrated and I think that is something that really detracts from our life.
So let me give you an example of curiosity. And this is kind of what sparked me on this. It opened up conversation with my wife, and it was awesome. I was cutting carrots, prepping for dinner and my wife was sitting at the bar just talking to me. And then I cut the carrots probably six or seven different ways. And she’s like, “why are you doing that?” And I’m not talking about six or seven different sizes or types. I was cutting the same size, but I was doing it six or seven different ways. And she asked me why I was doing that. And I told her, I was really curious about how the best way and most efficient way to cut a carrot is and how safely I could do it too with speed. And it led me down this path of just being experimental. And she’s like, “oh.” and that led into a whole entire conversation about curiosity.
Because oftentimes, when we face problems as people, we tend to just quit versus awesome a problem is amazing. Pressure, or something that must be overcome is amazing. Because it really forces us to be curious and ask why? How can I solve this? And I really think science is amazing, specially with all the curiosity out there. Like why does the sun do what it does? Why does it rays produce glucose and sugar, and then you have photosynthesis occur in plants. How does all of that work? And why does that work, is so powerful, because it really leads to a lot of where we’re at today in society.
Like it took somebody being curious, like, huh? I wonder if we can cook food faster? Somebody had to think that at some point, and then before you know it, we have a microwave, right? Maybe, you know, somebody thought about it hundreds of years ago, and they didn’t have the technology to actually act on that. But it’s the fact that those thoughts, and all of that leads down into improvement most of the time. And so I think curiosity is something that really should be celebrated in teamwork, I think it should be celebrated personally, I think it should be celebrated in our kids. Like whenever I hang out with my nieces and nephews, I really try and celebrate when they are like, “hey, why are you doing what you’re doing?” Versus, well, it’s always been done this way. Great. That’s a horrible mentality. Because, like, what if what you’re doing is really wrong or broken? Right?
I mean, that’s like business, you watch a lot of businesses go into struggle and into failure, because when the Internet came out, but “we don’t do the internet,” why? “Well, this is how we’ve always done it.” And then before, you know it, we have problems. And and that’s exactly how you get problems. Is because instead of changing, instead of being curious and excited about the unknown, we tend to shy away from it, we tend to be scared of it or we tend not to actually come up with a better solution.
And I think Steve Jobs, going to Apple, was very curious and did an amazing job about this. And I think he did an amazing job from not just sitting and be like, cool. This is how it’s always done. It’s like no, this is really where we should move forward. And let’s really think about and ask ourselves, why are we doing what we’re doing?
One of the things my business partner I always talk about is, really thinking and creating. But the creating, it’s not gonna come without curiosity, is there a better way to do this? How can we save more money? How can we cut expenses while improving everybody’s life? How can we love and take care of the team and yet also meet our goals?
And all that is curiosity. We don’t often see it like that. Or you come into a situation or you look at things go hmm, I wonder why they did that. Why? Why, is such a wonderful question. It’s a very exposing question, because it will also expose where you’re wrong. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we shy away from it. But curiosity is something that is very powerful, and if used correctly, is world changing in our lives.
The word why is so small, but it is an amazing word. And it can change worlds.
Anyways guys, I’m out of time. Five minutes is really short. And I will talk to y’all later. Have a great day everybody. Peace!