In middle age, curiosity is more important than ambition

Generally speaking, one of the characteristics of outstanding students, workers, managers, scientists, artists, and outstanding people who have made outstanding contributions to mankind and the world is strong curiosity and high intelligence.

Intelligence is difficult to change, but curiosity can be cultivated, and anyone who desires a happy life can have curiosity.

Many talented prodigies in the field like playing music, writing poetry or playing basketball at first, because it is fun, but this kind of fun is often obliterated by the pressure of fame. Basically, when curiosity and interest disappear, the benefits they bring to people also disappear. Kashi Dan research

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meaning and purpose of life

show, have curiosity People will pay more attention to continuously shaping a happy life .They pay attention to the current life and feel that life is full of meaning. At the same time, they are also trying to find and discover more meanings in life, and input nutrients for themselves.

How did we know this? In a number of studies, Kasdan asked the subjects what they did every day for several weeks, and asked them what they gained from these things. In this way, it can be found that what people did on a certain day or within a week is often the opposite of what they remembered through retrospect.

This finding is very important.

We know that if you ask parents with children if they are happy, they will answer "yes" in unison. But if you ask them to talk about specific things that happened on a certain day, you might get a completely different answer. Parents usually talk about frustrated and unpleasant moments, but seldom mention happy moments.

How you view the past is often very different from what happened at the time . Curiosity is also the gateway to the most important source of meaning in life. We call these sources interests, hobbies, and passions. If you want to discover the meaning and passion of life, you need to release curiosity and interest.

Exploration and discovery is a process of continuous exploration and experimentation of interesting things. In this process, we can decide which things are worth making long-term investment. Curiosity pushes people to find and create seemingly trivial but continuous meaning .

This process may be staying with an important person, or it may be devoted to a conversation, a book, a movie, a game, or a certain sport, and gain from it significance.

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social relations

we often do not equate to the curiosity of the social relations, but firmly believe that Kashi Dan , Without an open and curious mind, you cannot maintain a satisfactory and important relationship .

One of the main reasons for couples to seek counseling or psychotherapy is simply because they feel that their married life is very boring and boring, and it is often resentment, hostility, communication failure, or lack of interest in each other that follows ( These situations will aggravate the original problem).

People with curiosity can often have satisfactory relationships and marriages .

For example, in the eyes of loving couples, their partners are very funny and can respond positively to each other. In addition to existing interpersonal relationships, curious people will also make each other more harmonious when interacting with strangers.

In a study in Kasdan, participants needed to have a 5-minute conversation with a stranger of the opposite sex to get to know each other, and then everyone evaluated their peers. The researchers also separately asked the curious subjects’ closest friends and parents to understand their impressions of the closest people.

It was found that whether it was a person who knew only 5 minutes, or close friends and parents, they all believed that the subjects were enthusiastic, energetic, cheerful, talkative, confident and humorous, and were all about what they said and did. Excited, but also showed a wide range of hobbies. Compared with those who are less curious, they rarely show upset or timid, anxious appearances.

People who are full of curiosity often ask questions and are eager to get to know their peers, so they always consciously make the communication with each other lively and interesting. This interest helps to form a beneficial interaction, which in turn promotes the further development of the relationship between the two parties.

If people lack curiosity and openness to new things, people will not be able to tolerate uncertainty and are very eager to get definite conclusions in life. Although these characteristics can help people stay away from anxiety and stress, they also have a destructive effect on social relationships in the long run.

People with low curiosity will rely on some stereotypes to describe others.And it is easy to regard information that is inconsistent with one's own beliefs as a threat . Therefore, they will stick to their first impression, even if the first impression may be wrong.

This kind of closed thinking can create prejudice and make people resist opinions that are contrary to them and cannot reach agreement with others. In order to avoid the inconvenience caused by the uncertain factors in social relations, people with low curiosity will quickly change from love to hate, from trust to suspicion, or form other overly absolute thinking. People who are full of curiosity can easily deal with doubts and complex feelings in interpersonal relationships.

People with low levels of curiosity will regard the contradiction in interpersonal relationships with the partner as an unsolvable problem. These problems will quickly escalate into extreme behaviors, such as intense conflict, rejection, suspicion, and even Suddenly broke. If we trace the root causes of some social ills, the reason is the lack of curiosity.

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happy

For many people, happiness is very important, it is a major goal in life. Therefore, if this article is likened to a science-guided "curiosity advertisement", then it is very meaningful to put the effect of curiosity on happiness in the last part of this advertisement.

Gallup Consulting recently selected 130,000 people from more than 130 countries that account for 96% of the world’s population and conducted an unprecedentedly large survey.

The people surveyed believe that the happiness they can feel on a particular day is affected by two major factors. The two major factors are: "can trust someone for help" and "learn something new yesterday" thing".

This Gallup survey shows that: Developing good relationships, seeking new things and gaining personal growth are the key factors for a happy life . This is not all found.

In a major research in the field of psychology, Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson proposed a scientific classification method for the basic power of human beings. This system is based on extensive reading of ancient philosophers’ works, religious documents, and contemporary literary works, confirming their patterns, and finally testing them with rigorous scientific tests.

Their research finally concluded that there are 24 powers, some of which, such as love, spirituality, and emotional intelligence, are the first answers that pop up in our minds when we think about what makes us happy. . When Seligman and Peterson evaluated these 24 powers, curiosity was in the top 5, which is related to the following experiences:

· 　Experience the completeness and happiness of life.

· 　 get satisfaction from work.

· 　 Live a happy life.

· 　 Live a fulfilling life.

· 　 Live a meaningful life.

Compared with several other important traits such as love, emotional intelligence, kindness, forgiveness, perseverance, wisdom, etc., curiosity is more important. It ranks second only to hope, enthusiasm and gratitude.

In another study of 839 students in Croatia, Kasdan and his colleagues discovered that there are 24 powers that enable us to have a happy, fulfilling and meaningful life, but among them Only curiosity and enthusiasm are always in the top 5.

If you compare these 24 powers together and select the winner, you may notice that the most important powers that can bring happiness, each of which seems to be curiosity There is a certain connection.

Under the right conditions, those who relentlessly pursue personal growth are most likely to succeed .Because these curious people will enjoy the process and results to the full, and can control their own destiny, they have more favorable conditions to create and maintain a happy life.

The above content is excerpted from "Curiosity"

This book is built on the basis of extensive investigation and research, starting from the anxiety that people generally face in today's society and the "laying-down mentality", it reveals what determines people's career And the driving force of happiness in life-the origin and truth of curiosity. The book combines a large number of case studies to tell you how to effectively invest time and energy by stimulating and using curiosity, create lasting interest and passion for your career, improve social relations, and then grow and move towards a meaningful life.