There are lots of people in their 30s or 40s who don’t know what to do with their lives and they lack the needed mental clarity for survival. You can see it in the way they speak about their future and in the way they change jobs every 1 or 2 years. Most of those people have never had the chance to explore their passions and understand that life is more complex than how we can perceive it with our limited minds.
Most people finish their studies, get a job, have a family, and call it life. No wonder they don’t have the desired mental clarity because they never experienced what life has to offer. What if, instead of finishing your studies, you decide to postpone them and see if you really need that diploma to get a job.
Maybe discover how to learn new skills without the help of the school. What if, instead of getting the first job that’s offered to you, you decide to focus on using those skills that you have learned to create your own style of living.
What if…
But most people lack the needed curiosity that helps them discover the answers behind ‘what if…’ That curiosity is crucial because it creates the diversity that will help you see the world as it is. The more you’ll know about the world the more mental clarity you will have over your life.
Therefore, don’t set yourself to do all the things that everyone else does. Not because they are bad, but because you’ll limit yourself to a lifestyle that has nothing to offer. Instead, set yourself to discover life as it is and let life provide you with the things that you need so you can grow.
The importance of curiosity
Being curious is crucial. And the skill of being curious got so crucial that it is a key element not only for more mental clarity, but also for our survival.
If you’re not curious, you don’t learn. Period.
The more you decide to invest in discovering things, the more you’ll learn and the better you’ll understand the things around you.
To properly understand the importance of curiosity, here’s a hypothetical situation.
Imagine you have just graduated college and you don’t really know what you want to do next. During college and high school, nobody encouraged you to try anything so you just studied what you had to study and that’s it.
Two months after you finish college, you get an email from one of your colleagues and they say that they have a job for you. Your main responsibility in that job will be to ______.
How do you respond?
Well, you may say that I haven’t mentioned the responsibility so you don’t know how to respond. And that’s what happens when you’re not curious and you don’t experiment with different activities.
It doesn’t really matter what the main responsibility is when you are not really prepared to do anything.
It could have been any of the following:
- Speak in front of people;
- Call people and generate leads;
- Develop websites for the existing clients;
- Coach people to overcome their struggles.
If you don’t have the curiosity to explore different types of activities, you won’t know what to do. Therefore, you’ll lack the mental clarity needed for survival.
The importance of diversity for mental clarity
On the other hand, diversity only happens after you are curious.
You can’t get to experience a different number of activities if you’re not curious to experience the first one.
To properly understand the importance of diversity, here’s a hypothetical situation.
Let’s say you are 25-to-30 years old. Actually, this is available for most ages, but let’s continue with this age interval.
You have a stable career and you know what you have to do at your job. Your salary is more than decent and you don’t feel like you’ll have to look for another job anytime soon.
Therefore, you find yourself with 3 to 4 hours of free time every day, after you finish your work. You decide to try something new (anything that comes to your mind) and after you experience it, you feel like that’s what you should do and you keep doing it.
In such a case, diversity is not present in your life. You had the curiosity to experience something new, but the diversity is missing.
How is this going to affect you?
In the present moment it’s not going to affect your life at all. You’ll be happy to do whatever you decided to do. You’ll also have the time, money and other resources available to invest in whatever you decided to do and that will make you even happier.
But there will come a time in your life when you’ll have to make some changes and these changes won’t be small.
Maybe you’ll have to change your career, maybe your city, maybe your family or friends. That’s when having diversity in your life will really matter as it will provide the mental clarity required for any change.
You see, when you change your life, you have to suddenly (usually in a matter of days) see your life from an entirely new perspective. In case you can’t do that, you’ll struggle to adapt and you may end up with some frustrations.
Diversity is what will help you properly accept the change.
And this is really simple.
The version of you who is a programmer (the main activity) and decided to learn how to dance (the only secondary activity as a result of being curious) has a limited perspective over what is going on in the world.
The version of you who is a programmer (the main activity) and decided to try out dancing, painting, acting, running a marathon, singing, writing, and so on, will have a broader perspective over what is going on in the world.
The more activities you experiment, the stronger your mental clarity will be. Therefore, you’ll be able to adapt to things that, at first, may feel out of your control.
With love and optimism,
David