A Curiosity Challenge for Healing: Embracing the Unknown
Let’s Get Curious….
As a part of my Healing Centered Coaching approach, I often invite Changemakers to lean into curiosity. Meaning allowing themselves to move away from the known and away from a judgmental mindset to truly allow themselves to explore the unknown.
For many Changemakers, especially Changemakers of Color this invitation to curiosity often comes with a lot of baggage.
Why so much baggage around curiosity?
I remember when the amazing Trevor Noah was in the final season of his Daily Show, and he took a moment to honor and applaud Black Women.
“When people give me credit for being smart, who do you think teaches me?” he asked. Noah then gave praise to his mother, grandmother, and aunt. He went on to say, “Because unlike everybody else, Black Women can’t afford to fuck around and find out. Black people understand how hard it is when things go bad, especially in America, but any place that Black people exist.”
In the midst of hearing Noah’s beautiful tribute, I noticed the smile leaving my face and the pain beginning to move to a knot in my belly. What I had just experienced in my body, was the confirmation that as a woman of Color, a Black woman in particular, the realization that I wasn’t granted the privilege of not knowing.
A part of me had known this for a long time, from the you have to be the best lessons drilled into me from my beloved community. To the stories of my parents and grandparents that constantly reminded me of the lessons that were learned through painful mistakes. I even saw it in the conversations with mentors who taught me to navigate situations in ways that would set me up for less risk. But at this moment I asked myself, “What’s the cost of not having the privilege to be curious? Why do I always have to get it right?“
What if I was curious?
After my moments of realization around my invisible chains of getting everything right on behalf of myself and my entire community. I began to consciously protest, by inviting myself to get curious about what might change in my life if I gave myself permission to be curious or in Noah’s words, “fuck around and find out.” There was something provocative in the invitation and so I began to look at opportunities to push my judgmental boundaries and truly give myself permission to be unapologetically curious.
My Curiosity Challenge
When I identified a topic for my curiosity challenge, I felt the sweat begin to pour, and my heartbeat race. So I knew that it was a true challenge that would stretch me around my curiosity.
I landed upon a curiosity challenge around my relationship with financial abundance. This was because I had recently noticed my shift from an abundance mindset to a conservative spending mindset that was pushing me to account for every penny. I even noticed a tightness emerge when planning for spending in my company, suddenly mentally repeating quotes, like “Money doesn’t grow on trees” and “Money only spends once.”
This “get it right” energy had me looking through a scarcity lens, pushing me to shut things down, stop seeking opportunities, and be conservative in my planning and spending. Which of course brought me anxiety, sleepless nights, and a lot of time in false futures.
So to launch my curiosity challenge, I began by asking myself a few questions:
What would you do if your current problem in this area didn’t exist?
What are 2-3, one-year goals you would set for yourself in this area if you had no fear?
What are you curious about around your growth in this area?
What do you need to heal in order to truly stretch in this area?
How can you seek support to move beyond your current limits in this area?
What’s one bold thing you could do to propel you into your ideal future around this area?
I gave myself a few days to sit with these questions, using my journal and audio recorder to capture my responses. I noticed that I started off feeling really tight and cautious in my responses, but as I went on and gave myself more permission and space to dream, I began to get curious. Where I landed was so many miles from where I began.
What I Learned and Tried In My Curiosity Challenge
What I decided to do was truly give myself permission to get curious and test my understanding of how to attract wealth through an abundance mindset. I challenged myself to get curious about strategies that would support me to relax around being so careful and cautious in my spending.
I got curious about partnerships and practices that would allow me to lean into abundance. I gave myself permission to be curious and bold in weaving in new practices that stretched me away from the scarcity mindset and encouraged me to be expansive. Eventually, this led me to invest 20K in scholarships to Black Women students that would allow me to introduce Healing Centered Coaching to new communities.
Key Learnings from My Curiosity Challenge:
Continue to challenge and check your judgmental self, noticing when you feel less choice
Identify strategies that allow you to stay curious.
Be gentle with yourself and encourage yourself as you learn, grow, and heal.
Give yourself permission to be curious and to stay curious on behalf of your next level.
Snap your invisible chains of always getting it right and always knowing what to do next.
