Dahlia

It has come to my attention that I am not open. Or at least, not as open as I thought.

Last year, I had an extended period of feeling professionally stale and under-challenged. Although I’d been casting around for something new, little had seemed to spark me. So, as any good coach would do, I asked myself, “What would I suggest to someone else if they had this problem?”

Answer to self: Get curious. Don’t just look around for new challenges or experiences–try looking at old situations with new eyes.

So I gave myself some homework. I decided that in addition to looking for new challenges, that I would also re-trace familiar terrain.  As an experiment, I decided to say “yes” to things that I would ordinarily say “no” to.

I was nervous about this, because I know myself pretty well, and I didn’t want to waste time exploring things I already knew were dead ends. You can probably sense where we’re going with this: Rather than confirming my long-held beliefs about what I like or don’t, this exploration opened up a whole new vista.

Over time, we all discover our preferences, interests, and talents. We realize that acknowledging them keeps us from avoidable crappy experiences. But the fact is: we are always changing. And as a result, our preferences and interests are always changing–even though we may not consciously know it.

A goofy way I tested this was by trying to eat beets, after a decades-long hiatus. I have always HATED beets: as far as I’m concerned, eating a handful of dirt has the same flavor profile. Or so I fervently believed.

As part of my experiment, I decided to see whether I still hate beets. And guess what? I do! That is, I hate EATING beets, but I discovered that I actually enjoy beets that are juiced with ginger and a fistful of greens.

So what? So…I learned that something I “knew” I hated is actually now palatable and even enjoyable, if presented in a new way.

This caused me to wonder whether there are beet equivalents in the rest of my life, things I “knew” I disliked that I actually ought to re-test. In the spirit of exploration and curiosity, I said yes to an organizational development gig that I would ordinarily say no to. In the course of that engagement, I met some new people and worked within an industry and community that I would not otherwise have known.

My point here is not that everything you hate or love will flip into its opposite over time, but that periodic testing of what we “know” is important. It was quite eye-opening to approach long-standing preferences and dreads with curiosity, to see if they still held. And to understand that in subtle but significant ways, I have changed. I learned that my interests and inclinations are more nuanced than I had thought, and, that the only way to scope them out is to question what I thought I already knew.

Takeaway: Dead certainty is a curiosity killer.

Takeaway: You can’t be curious if you’re not open.

Biggest takeaway: Being open is not a default setting, you have to practice it.