Wisdom, Courage, and Humanity Reflection

This learner focused on activity 2.3 of the Positive Psychology Activities, titled: Curiosity Activity. This activity asked three (3) questions in total ranging from life without curiosity to curiosity as a character strength and the correlation of curiosity as it relates to fear and / or anxiety. As this learner processed and identified each of these questions, this learner’s thought processes were as follows:

What would life be like without curiosity? How would it affect learning, personal growth, relationships, innovation, or search for meaning in life?

Without the existence of curiosity, we, as a human population, would not be able to grow or develop. Plainly stated, “Without [curiosity and] research, we could not possibly have survived as long as we have,” (Simboli). When we take a trip to the beginning of creation, think of the Book of Genesis, we remember Adam and Eve. Without curiosity being born within our natural beings, Eve would not have taken a bite of the forbidden fruit—the apple.

Eve is a creature of mystery to man, God and Satan alike, she praises God through Adam as her husband, but yet still remains open to wisdom; “she already obtained beauty and grace, wisdom is all she has left to seek,” (Sucato, 2015). Within Eve’s dream where the curiosity of her existence, spirituality, and longing for knowledge lies, Satan appears to her through several messages provoking her toward certain influences—“Her conflicting desires alone make her a target for heavenly concern. On the one hand, she wants to obey her husband and her creator. On the other she is curious and wants to listen to her senses and experience the restricted,” (Sucato, 2015). Thus, the creation of curiosity. Without this instinctual curiosity born within our begins, we would all truly live entirely different lives, and without curiosity everything in creation would have been created solely out of survival and fear of God. Nothing could have been developed or created for the sake of experimentation.

How can anxiety or fear of the unknown prevent us from being curious?

“Imagine living in a world where every opportunity for success, for growth, for love and acceptance is possible. In that is every opportunity for success, also so is opportunity for failure,” (Baker, C.E., 2017). When we live with fear of the unknown, we put up a wall. We believe this wall is a wall of protection—it will protect us from harm, but sometimes it can just harm us by holding back our emotional development by being curious. “When we open ourselves to curiosity, rather than fear of the unknown, we open ourselves up to unlimited possibilities. When we create an environment where serendipitous connections among ideas and people can occur then innovation is more likely to occur,” (Baker, C. E., 2017). If we can turn our fear of the unknown into curiosity, we can continue to keep our childlike curiosity and in essence continue to believe that spiders are just tickly, and not scary… that snakes are just wiggly and not scary… we can keep some of our innocence by simply being curious.

If you made a conscious decision to practice being more curious about anything that interested you in life, how might that benefit you? What makes curiosity a character strength?

Trauma. Being curious about trauma, and trauma informed behaviors and motivators has benefited this learner in several ways by processing and healing from personal traumas. Curiosity is in fact a character strength because it allows individuals to ask healing questions and create innovations that lead to positive outcomes. Some of the best innovations have been created out of curiosity—take the lightbulb for example, we could have survived without a lightbulb, but thinking, “I wonder…” that is the true nature of curiosity.

To take away from this assignment, this learner was able to relate each of these questions directly to her own life and decisions made. Something that was learned by having this reflection, is that a wall has most definitely been built, brick by brick, to help keep the unknown at bay. Fear of failure, fear of being hurt again, fear of additional trauma—by establishing a newfound relationship with curiosity, it helps to eliminate the fears, or at the very least put them at bay and time will heal the wounds as new habits are formed.

Relationship to Positive Psychology

Curiosity is a core function of the human existence. It keeps us searching for human connections, which will enable us to effectively create exciting and at times life changing innovations. Carl Ed Baker (2017) states in a Ted Talk that when some innovators had created an antenna to hear things from outer space, all they had gotten was a hum. Through all of their trials and tribulations of believing their device was defective, one of the innovators met with an individual who had recently read an article from Harvard in which it was believed that when the Big Bang caused all of matter to spread across the universe, it also caused radiation to spread across the universe as well. This was believed to eventually be heard in the form of a constant hum. Thus, because of this human connection formed based on curiosity of the unknown—and probably frustration at the possibility of a defective antenna—it was documented that the hum that these innovators heard, was in fact the echo of the Big Bang.

As Alan Watts said, and was found cited in Sandra’s article from the Julia Morgan School for Girls, “By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibilities. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become childlike with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leap out of our comfort zones, and accepting what life puts before us.” This states to this learner, that even though we are most comfortable in our comfort zones… in order to grow, learn, and develop our sense of curiosity in the world we must step outside of comfort zones, much like a child would, in order to gain the appropriate level of human connection.

This demonstrates the principles and concepts of positive psychology in many ways, such as the fact that human connections requires a sense of humility. You cannot make worthy connections from a negative standpoint, connections with other human beings thrive on positivity. “Having an open and accepting stance toward oneself is related to being open to the world in general. Self-compassionate individuals may be more curious about life because they tend to be intrinsically motivated and have less fear of failure when faced with difficult challenges,” (Neff, K. D., Rude, S. S., & Kirkpatrick, K. L.). By having an open and accepting stance toward oneself, will lead individuals to feeling the same toward others. By showing humility and self-compassion, one will more likely be willing to open up and explore these human connections positively.

Application to Personal or Professional Issues

Information obtained during this assessment will greatly help this learner appreciate the differences in everyone personally and professionally. This will lead to creating better, more positive relationships with individuals after experiencing great traumas. It can help lead to looking out for oneself, but also being opened to stepping outside of the comfort zone to acquire and maintain external relationships and human connections. Coming from a stance on trauma, the level of appreciation for this world is great and ever evolving. Curious to learn the why behind individuals actions, and what led to them to doing what they did is a curious approach to handling and healing trauma.

Strengths to being able to apply these lessons learned to personal and professional environments is that will show compassion toward not only one-self, but toward others. In Lopez, S. J., Pedrotti, J. T., & Snyder, C. R. (2019) text curiosity is described from the VIA Classification of Virtues and Strengths as, “Taking an interest in ongoing experience for its own sake.” This shows that curiosity is not a single experience, but an ever changing, evolving and humbling experience that is life-long. Developing connections will show a desire or an interest for these ongoing experiences. This learner does not see a disadvantage with taking a humble and curious approach to life, however, a possible disadvantage is in the beginning this could show as ingenuine with not having shown a degree of compassion to this extent previously. It will take time, and it will take patience to re-learn how to establish healthy relationships and to push forward.

References:

1) Baker, C. E. (2017). Replace Fear of the Unknown with Curiosity | Carl Ed Baker | TEDxWichitaStateUniversity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYrX3qvdNaM.

2) Lopez, S. J., Pedrotti, J. T., & Snyder, C. R. (2019). Positive psychology: The scientific and practical explorations of human strengths (4th ed.). Sage Publications.

3) Neff, K. D., Rude, S. S., & Kirkpatrick, K. L. (n.d.). An Examination of Self-Compassion in Relation to Positive Psychological Functioning and Personality Traits. ms, Journal of Research in Personality. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009265660600095X

4) Sandra. (n.d.). The Power of Curiosity. Julia Morgan School for Girls. https://www.juliamorganschool.org/list-detail?pk=101505.

5) Simboli, C. (n.d.). The importance of research in the advancement of society. Cayuse. https://cayuse.com/blog/importance-of-research-in-our-society/.

6) Sucato, S. (2015). Curious Girls Don 't Follow Rules: Eve and Obedience in Paradise Lost. Vassar College: Senior Capstone Projects. https://digitalwindow.vassar.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1490&context=senior_capstone.