#4 Curiosity Over Certainty

Welcome to Different Points with myself and Roy Colan. Roy, lovely to see you today. How are you doing? I'm doing very well.

And yeah, as always, I mean, I look at your background and I always, oh, I like the flowers. I like the background. I think it's important as well that, you know, I mean, I know I use my green screen of the different things I do, but I always appreciate the background that you use because it kind of just goes, that's nice.

I like the flowers. I don't know, are they even chestnuts around it or something around the plant? It's little feng shui wooden fruits. But if you put them around, it's supposed to help bring you good fortune.

So, yeah, there was one time actually, Roy, where I came on a call with you and I didn't have any flowers out. And you said you threatened to close the call as a joke. So now I always make sure.

So today's topic is curiosity, overcertainty. Or is it? So curiosity, overcertainty. I love this topic myself because I actually feel that something I've battled with in my life is being over certain things because I think I know best and then discovering later that my certainty actually blocked me from learning something I really needed to learn or discovering something new I needed to discover, or it may be inflexible or arrogant or bossy or whatever.

So for me, at times in my life, being over certain has really gotten away. But equally, sometimes being overly curious has taken me in the direction of having far too many good ideas and I can't follow them all up and I get completely chaotic. So for me, a balance between curiosity and certainty is really important.

But on balance, I think curiosity is more creative and more life opening, if you like, than certainty. So I think it's a really interesting topic. Roy, what do you have to say about this? Well, when you said the topic, it's my grandmother and her brothers and sisters.

They'd be having a conversation and they all believed they were correct. And the same has happened with me and my mom. There's a few stories and I said, no, it's this.

And she says, no, it's this. And we're all certain of what we're saying because we've told ourselves a story and sometimes our belief system is based on the story that we've told us. So we think you're wrong.

And I mean, it's the same in politics and everything. There's people, they're certain, I'm right, you're wrong. And that's the way it is.

And if you go to be curious, you go, why do you think this? And why do I think this? What's your story behind this? And just being curious. And that's just a part of it. I mean, there's a lot of different angles you can go in that.

But if you look at that, you can then kind of, okay, let's just check with somebody else that's been curious. What's your take on this? And then the other person says, well, this is what I remember. And then somebody can say, well, I have a diary and I remember writing the diary.

And then they go back and check the diary. And I go, oh, I didn't realize that. Like, for example, I'll give an example.

I thought I started Kung Fu when I was 16. And my mom had sent me, and I had been telling lots of people, because I knew it for about six years or something like that. And my mom sent me a letter that I had written to my cousin when he was in England.

And I was telling them I was doing Kung Fu and I was 13. And I was certain I was 16. So sometimes we take the layers off or we get curious about why is this? So now I question everything.

I try to get curious. Why am I certain of such a thing? And be open to change as well, because sometimes people get defensive or the ego gets in the way they want to be right. It's okay to be wrong, because we had a belief system or we taught that because maybe we told ourselves a story.

Perhaps we had a dream and we believed the dream to be true. And that's why we think it's certain. It's okay to be incorrect.

And I think by being curious, you can actually take a few layers off and find out maybe not always the truth, but you can get closer to the truth. 100%. And it just reminded me when I started a master's degree in humanistic psychology.

And when I started, the tutors accused me, you know, when I had to start writing essays and things, they accused me of being over certain. And I said, What do you mean? I thought you wanted me to argue my point. I thought you wanted me to put forward a point and argue for it and prove the point.

No, we're not interested in that at all. We're not interested in you having an opinion, or you've been right about your opinion. That's no use to you.

If you're a practitioner, you know, a facilitator, a coach, etc. No one cares about your opinions. You need to be able to hear all opinions.

You need to be able to, you know, value all opinions, all perspectives. So they gave me a task. They said, Right, see these different philosophers, we've been studying these philosophers and psychiatrists, they said, we want you to write an argument between those people.

So you've got to write what each of them would say, all the way through the argument. You know, and it was really, really difficult to do, I had to imagine how each of them would think about the topic, and what they would say, and what the other person would respond with. But it was such a powerful experience, it completely broke open my belief that being certain was the best way to be, that being certain was better than not being certain.

And it was very, very freeing, indeed. I formed my own Toastmasters club a few years ago. And what I did is I did a debate, where we had like tree against tree.

But what we were doing is we were getting the people that would be pro something to be against it. So then they had to, and that was a very interesting exercise, because something that you believe in, now you have to say the opposite. And I think that actually kind of makes you very curious as well.

And even though you might have thought, I'm right, and this is my belief system, the fact that you had to go in and do the research, and have a different point of view, like the show, it could change your mind. And I think maybe start doing that in your class with your friends. It's a great way of actually breaking the ice, having fun, to actually, okay, you talk about this, but you're on that side, even though you know that you're usually on the opposite side.

Yeah, brilliant. So I think that's a fantastic game that you could play for yourself today, which is, whenever you find yourself having a piece of certainty across the course of the day, I mean, obviously, if you have to pay the mortgage, you have to pay the mortgage, you don't have to go into a state of curiosity about that. But otherwise, if something comes up, and you feel like you're really, really certain about it, maybe just as a thought experiment, talk to yourself about it, from the completely opposite point of view, and just see what happens.

And you can do this privately on your own. So no one knows you're doing it, you're not going to embarrass yourself. Or you can do it with friends, like Roy was saying, and it's really good fun.

So thank you again for watching and listening. And thank you again to Roy, for another lovely opportunity to play with these ideas. And see everybody tomorrow.

Thank you.