6 ways to stimulate your curiosity

Curiosity, not necessity, is the mother of invention! Your creative brain reaches out into the world, sees something that surprises it, and that kick-starts the creative process. 

As we get older, we learn to screen out surprises and focus on the patterns that help us to succeed at basic tasks.  That's very practical--and awful for our creativity.  So here are a few ways you can get your curiosity up and running again.

1. Find three things to ask "why" about, every day.  Remember how you drove the grownups crazy with this question, way back when?  Drive yourself crazy with it, and you'll regain some of that childhood wonder.

2. Use more of your senses to observe the world.  If you're a primarily visual person, use your ears.  If you're a primarily auditory person, use your nose.  You get the idea.  By bringing new information to your brain, you will automatically stimulate its curiosity.

3. Take your head out of the google-verse and start learning from your own experience.  Doing it yourself means no more fast answers; instead, you'll have to live with ambiguity.  Since ambiguity can be frustrating, that puts your curiosity in the driver's seat.

4. Ask other people what they think about the world.  You may be surprised at the diversity of opinion around you.  If so, you will become more curious about your options and the way different people think.

5. Change a habit.  If you always take the same way to work, choose a different route.  Be curious about it.  If you always eat the same kind of food, try a different kind.  Be curious about that!  The point is to change something and let that stimulate your curiosity.

6. Learn something new.  This is just plain good for your brain and your personality.  Take up the guitar, and then get curious about the history of guitars and guitar music.  Study a language, and then get curious about the history of its native speakers.  Learning is fun, it makes you smarter, and it kick-starts your creative brain.

The problem of boredom

Have you ever spent a couple of hours (watching TV, say) being passively entertained, yet when it was over, you feel more bored than ever?  That's because passivity and boredom are closely linked.  The entertainment may have been fun while it lasted, but it doesn't satisfy your need for a vital, engaged, expressive life.

Boredom occurs when people are not challenged by their activities. A person has many facets, from talents to personality traits, and when too  many of those are underused, boredom is the result.  People are bored when they can't or don't intentionally change their activities to make them more challenging. 

In some ways, boredom is actually a good sign; it means that you care how your time is being used.  Unfortunately, it's also an uncomfortable, frustrating, and (sadly) sometimes necessary experience.

My solution to boredom is observation.  Even if I can't actively engage in the activities I find most fulfilling, at any point in time I have a mind and the ability to observe the world around me.  Standing in line, doing a repetitive task, politely listening to someone repeat a story I've heard a hundred times--all of these are times when I can devote a piece of my mind to observation.  Even a fly on the wall is interesting if you are curious about it!

The bonus is that those observations, from time to time, lead to ideas that I can use in my creative projects.  So while I haven't eliminated boring activities from my life,  at least I've made boredom very rare.