Alice experienced curiouser and curiouser

Dragon Mood? -- somehow being curious makes my nose itchy

Once upon a time I got a health newsletter that had a link to here.

From there, I learned about things like Signature Strengths and a fellow named Dr. Martin Seligmann, who is a psychologist and the leading spokesman for a movement named postive psychology. I still occasionally get emails from his organization, Authentic Happiness, and recently received one about curiosity.

Now, based on some work that I did with a personal coach over a year ago, I learned (finally -- surprise, surprise) that I'm a pretty curious person. Remember Curious George? -- the cute little monkey always getting into scrapes and unusual situations because of his curiosity? Well, I guess I'm a dragon-y female version of Curious George . . . call me Curious Mary.

Here's some things this newsletter said about curious people, along with benefits and the downsides of curiosity:

• Curious people have an ongoing, intrinsic interest in both their inner experience and the world around them. Curious people tend to be attracted to new people, new things, and new experiences, and they are rarely bored.
• Everyone possesses curiosity to some degree. People differ according to the strength and breadth of their curiosity and their willingness to act on it.
• Curiosity benefits our social and romantic lives. Curious people are often considered good listeners and conversationalists.
• Curiosity is associated with intelligence and problem-solving ability.
• Curiosity is associated with high performance in both academic and work settings. There is evidence to suggest an upward spiraling relationship between curiosity and knowledge. The more we learn, the more we want to learn, and so on.
• Curiosity in the absence of good judgment can lead to trouble.
• When curiosity clashes with social norms, further trouble can ensue. Anyone with a small child needs no further elaboration on this point. Curiosity can motivate the youngster to ask questions such as, “Why don’t you have any children?” or “Is that man’s belly big because he’s pregnant?”

Then the newsletter talks about building curiosity:

All things considered, the benefits of curiosity far outweigh the possible risks. Cultivating this strength can lead to both personal and professional rewards. So how might we go about developing this strength? One idea comes from the work by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, one of the founders of the field of positive psychology and a pioneering researcher in the area of flow.

According to Cskikszentmihalyi, there is a direct relationship between our attentional resources and our interest in the world: Nothing is interesting to us unless we focus our attention on it. Rocks are not interesting until we begin collecting them, people in the mall are not interesting until we become curious about their lives and where they are going, and vacuum cleaners are not interesting until we need to buy a new one. According to Csikszentmihalyi, we can develop our curiosity (and fight boredom) by making a conscious effort to direct our attention to something in particular in our environment.

I like the idea of being curious about all kinds of things and people . . .