G'day leaders. In this podcast we talk about curiosity. So rather than telling you what it's all about, get curious. Enjoy.
Why do it count backwards? Are they? We're now recording.
What? Hello Captain.
What do I say?
Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away.
What are we going to talk about?
I don't know. So leadership, life and everything else.
And we're live.
No, we're recording.
In Darwin.
Yes, yes we're here for International Men's Day.
Yes.
You were a special guest speaker yesterday at the event up here in Darwin.
It was so much fun.
150.
180.
180, 180, uh, Territorians.
Yeah, amazing men in that room.
Yeah, so much support for each other and they all sat there beautifully listening and holding space for all of the great speakers that were up on the stage. We learned so much from so many people yesterday.
Yeah, and how lucky am I? I get to hear your talk and your motivational keynote in different parts of the country and the world. And every single time I hear it, I take something else from it.
Yeah.
And just even the audience interaction yesterday, some of the parts that they took away then gave me a different perspective. It was amazing.
It was a great audience. The energy in the room was just beautiful. It was, we love it up here. How many times have we come up here now?
Yeah, yeah, I know. About four or five times now.
Four or five times up in Darwin and we're, yeah, we love it up here. Now you're limping along.
Yeah.
I broke your toe.
I broke my little toe. Of course you can't do anything for a little toe. So my jelly bean toe is fat jelly bean.
Fat jelly bean toe, poor thing. Yeah. But we haven't recorded for a while.
No, no. Life has been full.
It has been full. I got to watch your keynotes over in Adelaide and your workshops you've been running as well. But we didn't get a chance to record any podcasts.
No.
Anyway, we're back.
Yes.
And Bo's, we still haven't heard from you and Bollinger. We're waiting.
Yes, come on Bollinger.
Now I'm curious, Michelle, what did you want to talk about today?
Curiosity.
I like it. Look at that segue.
Oh, I know, I know.
A little corny.
A little corny. I think I'm the corniest. I've got the corniest humor in the world.
Well, was it the Curiosity Show with Rob and Rob?
I love the Curiosity Show.
Yeah.
It shows our age, doesn't it?
It does, yeah.
Yeah.
And the reason why I wanted to speak about curiosity today is that often we go along with the flow. We turn up. We do our thing. We go. And it's just this routine, the monotonous.
And after a while, you may start to feel a little disenchanted with your job, with life, with how things are going, or it becomes a bit boring. But if you decide to look at things with curiosity and meeting people, when meeting people with curiosity, and that's based on how I came up with this, is based on the last episode, which is on the art of listening.
That's right. And so one of the things that I also use with the art of listening is curiosity. So wanting to know as much about that person and learn as much about that person with a curiosity, almost a hunger.
And then it turns off my brain wanting to interject, wanting to respond.
And this would be great. I guess this is in addition to the listening podcast. I like this, the curiosity. So having curiosity bent when you're listening.
That's right. So there's listening. And then I was thinking, okay, not just the listening, but in life, curiosity. So if you're disenchanted with your partner, your life, your job, your role, whatever it is, if you can change your perspective and come at things with a curiosity.
What don't I know? Why am I thinking this? What do they know? What do they do? Then it gives you a new perspective at almost a new lease on life. Just based on the curiosity.
I like this. This is reminding me of, so my number one thing in life is learning. I don't want to spend a day on this planet without learning something.
I've got this thirst for knowledge, but you've just really put a different word on it now. It's curiosity. I think the world is an amazing place.
And I used to think I knew stuff, but the more I learned, the more I realized I know nothing.
And so, yeah, I think that's where my passion for learning comes from. The curiosity that makes the world a better place and makes it a more interesting place.
Because the more you learn, the more you realize you know nothing.
Well, I use this technique as well. If there's something that I'm not so excited about, something I need to go to attend, I might have a job or something to do that I almost consider a chore.
I'm not that excited by it. If I switch my perspective into curiosity, it just changes it because I'm there to learn.
I'm there to discover, even discovering why I have a resistance to going or to doing it. It's like, oh, okay, I didn't know that about myself.
So you're kind of stepping out into the observer in your mind and you're like, well, why am I not looking forward to this? Why am I bored here? Why don't I like this? Why do I think or feel that?
Yeah, and it could be an unconscious bias that I might have, which becomes conscious. So then I can either work on that or kind of acknowledge it and go, okay, now I know why.
But the curiosity and you can change up your curiosity as a child, as a leader, as a follower, as somebody who's new to it.
So even customer centricity, if you put yourself in the shoes of a customer and doing it curiously, then you might discover an experience that you hadn't thought of.
I like this, Michelle. I can see why you came up with this idea. Because like you said at the start, we travel through life and we get just into patterns, rotted paths of thinking, rotted paths of feeling.
We just exist rather than curiously experience the world. I like this. This is a great way to just a little reminder that you have the opportunity to get curious about your day, get curious about your work, get curious about your relationships, get curious about your friends to want to know more.
But that then becomes interesting. It becomes almost exciting that you're approaching life with this energy of tell me more, help me understand more rather than, okay, I know this.
And it's kind of why time speeds up as you get older. Have we spoken about this before?
I'm not sure if we have.
In any of the podcasts. So in the time management course, we talk about the fact that time speeds up as you get older, right? So as you get older, time speeds up. When you're a kid, nine till three o'clock at school is such a long time.
And it's exhausting thinking, oh, three o'clock, it's so long away. But nine to five goes like that.
It's three years between Christmases.
Exactly. Monday to Friday. It's nearly Christmas. I just took down the tree. I said this yesterday in the keynote. But I think, where was it going with this? Time, yeah, so time speeds up because you've seen it all before, right?
When you're a young kid, it's the first time you're experiencing life. So you pay attention to everything with 100% of your neural resources. And, you know, kids are always in the moment.
They're wide-eyed, their mouths are open, going, oh, look at that, look at that, look at that. And they experience life with this wonder, this curiosity, which is the word you've given us today.
And so therefore, their attention is solely wholly in the moment, which means that they're present. And when you're present, time slows down.
But the average adult spends their life thinking about what they're going to do tomorrow, what they did yesterday, what they're going to do on the weekend, what they should have done last weekend.
So we're always in another moment, which is why we don't live the current moment. And it goes past very fast. And that's why time speeds up.
But if you get curious, it's going to bring you back to the present moment.
Yeah.
So when I've used it and I've noticed other people use it. So when you learn something for the first time, you're learning it as a skill that you, and you may not be.
Not be a hundred percent proficient the first time. So you learn it, become proficient to a certain level.
If you then relearn it or get curious about the backstory of what you've just learned, you can then teach it and impart that onto others.
And so if you get curious, you can look at it from different angles, from different perspectives, using different analogies that may be more relevant to the audience that you're giving it to.
So someone you're training, someone you're teaching, someone you're telling for the first time, or they've been in the role and they might be rotted in their thinking.
So coming at it with another perspective, brainstorming.
I'm thinking of a physicist at the moment. I hope I'm getting his name right. Brian Cox. Do you know Brian Cox?
No.
He's a physicist. He's got this wonderful perspective.
And when I hear the word curiosity, I immediately think of him. He looks up into the night sky and he's looking at the stars and the galaxies.
And he's curious about when you listen to him talk, he's just got this thirst for understanding the cosmos and all that sort of stuff.
And so he always talks with this smile on his face. And I'm going to guess that he's got this in him.
He's got this curiosity where even though he's one of the smartest people on the planet that I've listened to in the past, he almost looks like a little child with this amazing curiosity.
I want to know what this existence is all about sort of thing.
And I've always admired him and I'm kind of putting curiosity into his intent, I guess, that he's got this childish curiosity that makes the world and the cosmos and the galaxies such an intriguing place for him.
Which is why you see the smile on his face because he's enjoying the experience of being curious about the nature of reality.
Well, you could even bring it up for, you know, and there are studies that to keep your mind active and to the neurons, you know, creating new pathways is to take a different route to work.
Use the opposite hand, opposite to dominant hand when cleaning your teeth or doing a task.
If you could also change up the level, so maybe get down on the ground and see things as your kids do or do it, you know, now that we've got drones, I've seen on social media the last week or so, there's an image, you know, where they are filming the beach, the waves from with their phone from the shore.
And then there's an image of that same scene, but from above in a drone and there's all these fish and they're playing and different perspectives.
Yeah. And just imagine what, how interesting your day would be if you could see it differently.
Yeah.
We were learning about perspective yesterday with Nick Bell, the firefighter, who's now like a consultant.
He was doing a keynote about looking at your perspective, looking at things from a different perspective, which is curiosity, isn't it?
Yeah. So if you can change your perspective on something, it becomes brand new.
So the world is then a more interesting place because you're constantly changing your perspective on things.
That's right. And he had done it as a as part of a process was you need to get a 360 degree view almost to see what's actually happening, not based on experience prior or an assumption.
Shout out to Nick.
Yeah.
So this curiosity mindset, yeah, the more we're talking about it, the more I'm starting to think about all sorts of aspects of your life where you could apply this, where if you get curious, the world becomes new.
When the world becomes new, you're not going to take it for granted.
You're not going to be bored. I've seen this all before.
And if you're able to put yourself into the shoes of somebody who has a different opinion to you.
So this is one of the things that we were starting to talk about in the listening. You're listening with the intent to understand.
Yes.
And what that is, is listening to the intent to understand it from their perspective, not just understand what they're saying, but from their perspective.
And I think that's a skill that everyone needs to develop is we've got to stop thinking that we're right all of the time.
You know, I was guilty of this when I was younger that I thought I knew stuff and what I knew was right and it was a fact. But a lot of facts are just opinions of information.
They're not absolutely guaranteed. This is the truth.
Because how many times have you been wrong in your life and learned something?
Well, facts, depending on the source, are opinion, which is, you know, colored or biased by their religion, political views, their cultural views, upbringing experiences, their observations, their assumptions.
So they're skewed.
We did. We did. So they're skewed.
Whereas if you then, you know, and there are people who try different religions because they're curious about what is it that this religion offers that everyone likes and then they go on to another one.
So they'll devote one year to a particular religion.
Yeah.
And it's not that they're, you know, laughing in the face or treating it lightly religion.
It's just they're curious.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Many years ago, I realized I knew nothing about religion. I didn't grow up in a religious family. My parents weren't religious.
My dad kind of moved away from the family religion. And so I was brought up to believe that if you can't see it, it doesn't exist.
Yeah.
But I felt quite naive. So I, many years ago, went on a bit of a journey to study the different religions.
And I found it really fascinating because I thought that I were all separate, but a lot of them come from a lot of the same sources.
And it was, I really enjoyed that that two or three years where I was, I was actively seeking out religious people, sitting down with them.
Hey, tell me about the wonderful things about your religion.
And what I loved learning, what I got really curious about was the fact that every religion on the planet all shares the same belief system around the, what, what it's called the golden rule in many religions.
And it's about basically the way you treat each other. It's about respect in the Bible.
I think it says do unto others as you would have others do unto you. But it's in every religion.
And so I got very curious about religion many years ago because I didn't know anything.
And when I learned the beauty that was in each religion, it really helped me understand why people are attracted to religion.
Well, it's also curiosity is a great way to have the confidence to try something new because you're trying it not with your ego that I could fail or I might not get this or I don't really understand.
If you come at it with a curious perspective, then it doesn't matter if you step up, if you don't understand straight away, because you're coming at it almost with a childlike view.
And nobody rubbish's children who are looking at something for the first time, trying to walk, trying to ride, trying to throw a ball.
It's that curiosity, what it feels like, what it, you know, the action, all of those.
One of the things I've noticed and I speak about this in the creativity and critical thinking courses and we've both got kids, when the kids young, they're just so curious about the world, aren't they?
And they've got these amazing imaginations. I love this about kids. They're curious about everything. They've got these amazing imaginations.
They create imaginary friends and you've got to set a setting for them at the dinner table at night.
Is your friend joining us tonight for dinner and what do they like to eat and all that sort of stuff.
So the kids are curious. You give them a present, they rip open the present, they take out, they get the box, they take out the toy, but then they play with the box because the box has got unlimited potential.
That toy is whatever it is, but that box can be whatever they want it to be. So kids have got these amazing, curious imaginations, yeah?
But then we send them to school. And our schooling system is really quite interesting.
We don't teach kids to use their creativity. We teach them to use their logical brains. This is my opinion.
So if you disagree, please feel free to reach out. But we teach them maths, science, English and stuff where they're either right or wrong.
We don't get them to constantly challenge the way things are. We teach them where they're right and wrong.
And I think the schooling system actually trains out of them that curiosity, that imagination.
And I recently read something NASA many years ago wanted to hire more creative geniuses. Yeah, have you heard this one?
So NASA wanted to hire creative geniuses.
So they asked some researchers to go out and find what makes somebody a creative genius, what makes somebody able to solve problems using creativity, etc.
They found that, and I hope I'm getting the data right, five-year-olds. 98% of five-year-olds are creative geniuses.
Wow.
98%, yeah. That was, again, I hope I'm getting these statistics right. For those who are listening, please feel free to look this up.
And if I'm wrong, share with me what the actual statistics were.
So at age five, 98% of five-year-olds are creative geniuses that they can use their imagination to solve problems.
Then they looked at 10-year-olds and it went from 98 down to, and these are pure guesses now, 70-something percent.
And then they looked at 15-year-olds and it dropped again. Then they looked at adults and it dropped down to 2%.
Wow.
Something like that. And what they found is that creativity and imagination and genius thinking is actively unlearned because of the way we educate kids.
And so curiosity is something that we need to keep.
We need that childish desire to understand how things work and use creativity rather than, oh, you need to learn how to think like everyone else has thought in the past and we will mark you right and wrong like we do at school.
I think there's a real disservice that we do to children when we take the creativity out of them and we teach them to think like everyone else, which means we're not going to be as innovative as what we can be.
We both are with training and do critical thinking. And there's an exercise where you look at the nine dots.
Don't give it away.
I won't give it away. But there are what is it now 19 different ways to solve it.
And there's one logical way that we give straight up. But kids get it straight away.
And adults just struggle hard.
They can't.
But one thing I noticed in the last workshop that I ran, it was with early learning educators and people who work in the early learning sector.
And they were coming up with amazing ideas straight up.
They were creative.
And I wonder if it's because they now part of, thankfully, part of Australia's early learning guidelines are that it's learning through play.
And so they are getting curious. And in order to do that, the educators are down at their level.
They're not standing up in front of a classroom.
They're down there on the carpet in the grass, in the water, in the mud with the kids.
And they're doing all of this play, which is learning like tactile learning and and curious.
Getting curious.
I did notice that.
And so, yeah, it would be interesting to see what percentage of people, adults who work with children, young children, like really young children.
Yeah. And how that's affected.
Yeah, they've caught the creative virus.
Influence them.
Curiosity. Yeah.
Yeah, I did notice that.
I like this, that when you work with young children, you become more childlike and which wakes up that part of your brain that's gone to sleep because you became an adult.
Yeah, I like that.
So let's wrap this up. Yes. Curiosity.
Okay. Makes the world a more interesting place.
It does. And you see things from a new perspective every day, every time.
Yeah.
So how do we let's give out some challenges.
Getting curious.
What does it feel like to brush your teeth with the other hand?
What does actually smell the coffee that you're drinking or the tea or the juice that you're drinking and then try and taste the different aspects of that drink.
Oh yeah.
What is this one? Colombian?
Yes, yes I know.
But it's almost like, you know, the semelias and people who wine tasters.
Yeah.
Get curious about your journey to work.
When we came to the, when we went to the airport, do you remember this? We were in the Uber coming up here to Darwin but we were going into the Sydney airport and the Uber map was taking us a different way to which we normally went, right?
Yeah.
And I said, where are you going? And to me it felt like we were going further away and it was a different route.
It was a, I've never travelled that way before and I think it was probably slightly longer but the traffic flowed more freely.
Yes.
And so at first I felt this annoyance, why aren't you going the way we normally go to the airport? I've got a flight to catch.
Yes.
But the, a map was taking him a different way.
And we actually got there quicker.
Yeah, yeah, even though it took us a little, it was along the journey, it got us there quicker.
But it was a different view out the window.
Yeah and do you remember I said to the Uber driver, where are you going?
Yeah.
And he went, this is the way.
I said, no it's not the way mate, we've been to the airport a thousand times, Michelle's the captain.
She's done this trip more than anyone else and he's going, no the map is saying this way.
So we're having an argument, not really an argument because there was no anger there but we're thinking, what the?
And then it turned out that it was a faster trip even though it was a longer distance.
Yeah.
Yeah, get curious about your journey. What else can we be curious about?
Oh, um.
The way we think.
That's right.
Yeah, just our perspective on things.
Yes.
About what we consider to be a fact.
Mmm.
Yeah, here's one, right?
So at university I studied sports science amongst many other things and what we were told, if you have an injury, RICE, rest, ice, compression, elevation.
Yep.
So if you hurt yourself, rest, ice, compression, elevation.
RICE is the acronym that we're taught.
But now there's a suggestion that you shouldn't ice an injury straight away.
The swelling is sending blood cells to that injury, the sprain or the hurt muscle or whatever it is or the slightly torn ligament that the swelling is there to repair it.
And if we put ice on it, it's going to stop the repairing.
So there's an argument that if you maybe go over on your ankle and you haven't broken anything, you stand up and walk, walk, encourage movement rather than icing.
So that was something that I found quite interesting that we've believed a certain thing for a very long time and now it possibly could be different again.
You might need to do some research.
I'm not a scientist with regards to this stuff, but get curious about what you consider to be a fact.
Yeah.
What else?
What else can we be curious about?
I'm thinking about what you spoke about yesterday.
We were just talking about the snooze button.
Oh yeah.
We've always been that the belief is that you shouldn't snooze and you just get straight up.
And then you said that you read somewhere that snoozing is actually good.
So I'm wondering if that fact is real or if it's just you've gone on to that.
You've switched onto that because you said that you like to snooze.
So therefore.
Well, everyone likes to press the snooze button on the alarm clock, but I've always taught that it's a bad thing.
Yes.
But there's a couple of researchers saying that it possibly might be a good thing.
But again, the study was self observation.
So it's not really scientific study.
It's more of a, you know, how do you feel after snoozing?
Wow, I like it.
I've had more sleep.
But maybe get creative.
So walk in somebody else's shoes for a day or for an hour or just, yeah, get curious.
Because life would be better if we had a childlike curiosity.
I like that Michelle.
Yep.
All right. More dogs.
More dogs.
There will be a better place with more dogs.
Bo's, Bollinger, come on, reach out, sponsor us.
And you know, if you want merch, go to our website, CaptainandtheClown.com, where you can buy our more dogs T-shirts, which always strike up a conversation.
When you're wearing one, there will always be somebody that comes up and says, yeah, I think we need more dogs.
And then other people go, oh, no, there's too many dogs.
And we know that they're cat people.
Yeah.
Because dogs, when you spend time with happy dogs, they inject oxytocin into your body and it makes you feel good.
Yeah.
All right. Great to see you again, Michelle.
Thanks, guys. Bye.
Bye.
Well, that was fun.
That was fun.
You're such a clown.
The clown.
Lady captain.
And who's going to listen to this?
Maybe our mums.
Thanks, mom.