Introduction: Finding Our Way Back to Curiosity

Geri: 00:00:00

Hi everyone. I'm your host, Geri Paige Butner. And in our very first episode of Abundantly Curious, I'm going to lay the foundation for this season with an exploration of what it means to be curious why we oftentimes don't allow ourselves to be as curious as would benefit us and some guiding principles for how we can leverage our curiosity and consume new ideas.

Learning, exploring and expanding into new experiences and possibilities are my absolute passion. And I can say without a doubt that my curiosity is at the root of my abundance of mental and emotional wellbeing, living a fulfilling and aligned life. And my success as an entrepreneur.

We tend to be tribal beings living in a world where we often make decisions and establish beliefs based on what is aligned with the popular beliefs of our tribe. Most of us belong to the tribe of what you call the mainstream or popular belief. This tribe lives in what I call a camp that roots itself and the beliefs, ideas, and practices that our society is most commonly exposed to.

And this includes, , what we consume via mainstream media, television, social media, and the societal expectations imposed on us via what I call the ladder of life on this ladder we go to school, get a job, get married, have children work a nine to five Monday through Friday until we're 65 and then retire.

There's a lot of research that supports how we are tribal beings by nature, meaning we have a strong desire to belong to groups. So it makes sense that we are inclined to choose a camp of shared beliefs, knowledge and behaviors to find a sense of belonging., What's interesting to me is what happens to our minds when we divide ourselves into these separate camp.

is Human Nature published in: 2019

Chances are, we're making decisions about what we believe like dislike, desire, think about and do largely in alignment with what is most popular in our camp.. This is in a way incredibly helpful and efficient for us. No one has the time to completely learn about each idea, debate, practice, or way of being and doing in order to properly and thoroughly decide on it for themselves.

There's just no way we can personally consume and understand robust information about everything. So we rely on shortcut. And while these shortcuts help us make decisions about things in an incredibly efficient manner. I see that there are two sides to this coin that we're going to explore. These shortcuts can sometimes be referred to as cognitive biases, which are thought processes caused by the tendency of the human brain to simplify information through a filter of personal experience and preferences.

And many of those experiences and preferences likely come from what is most commonly present in your camp or tribe or what you're exposed to.

Other times, in my opinion, it's what I'll refer to as idea branding.

While branding is most commonly referred to in the context of marketing and business, it is also really applicable to ideas, things, practices, behaviors, and more much like the shortcut of aligning with our tribe branding provides convenient boxes for us to place things in. So we know how to think about and engage with them.

I find it very interesting that the original meaning of the word brand was to mark with a hot iron to identify the maker or quality of its contents to brand. As in marking cattle, for example, has historically been an act of permanence. Once a brand has been set, there isn't much room for interpretation. The box of branding is seemingly so inflexible once set that companies and organizations utilize the process of rebranding when they want to shift the meaning and feeling associated with them. In order to change their position, they must break the box of the past brand in order to enter the new.

Note that brands and marketing and business are created by a few people who often have a shared bias or motive in mind, like the desired success of their company. And then that brand is impressed onto others. In the same way ideas, practices, beliefs, and ways of being and doing can be branded. And they are often branded within our camps, right alongside the cognitive biases all camps tend to carry with them.

Branding in its strongest form goes above and beyond assigning meaning to a business or idea it assigns meaning to you. I've personally spent over a decade as a marketing leader in the startup in corporate space. I've built multiple brands from the ground up. And so I can honestly tell you that when brands are built, they are intentionally created to make you feel a certain way about yourself.

And I'm not saying this is inherently right or wrong or good or bad, cuz that's totally contextual and unique to each branding process. But my point is brands are exceptionally sticky because they are made to be personal. The decisions you make based on branding mean something about you. Let's take a look at a couple of examples.

in the most common application of the term branding, which is in the business and marketing world, the quintessential example of branding is Apple. New release Apple iPhones cost more than the average laptop, computer and countless online smartphone rankings assign their number one recommendation of product to other brands.

Yet in: 2021

Original advertisements for apple typically showed PC versus Mac users. And what you would see often in the PC user is that they're out of shape, they're dressed in ill-fiting clothes or suits. They're not cool. And they're side by side with a stylishly dressed young cool looking Mac user the message here is loud and clear. If you don't use apple products, you aren't cool. And if you do use apple products, you are a part of the cool, smart, stylish tribe of the future.

Now Apple's branding has expanded way beyond these advertisements today, but the brand tone remains similar. Apple is the sleek and sexy way to belong as an elite and progressive group. And choosing other brands is a surefire way to get left behind.

Once you are a part of this cool group of Apple users, you enter into Apple's ecosystem, it's community, it's camp of offerings and features, and suddenly find yourself in a tribe of its own. I can't count the number of times I've heard apple users, myself included lament when the group chat goes to green, when a non iPhone users, when a non iPhone user enters and converts it from blue iMessage to green text.

What's fascinating is that despite new smartphones being released by other brands every year, many with cool features, Apple has yet to offer apple enjoys a 90% loyalty rate.

Meaning basically that once you buy Apple, you are very unlikely to change to any other brand. In fact, many Apple users, blindly upgrade to the latest model of the smartphone without comparing, or even considering other smartphones.

This is branding in its most powerful form. Powerful branding can cause people to start making decisions without curiosity, and without taking in new information. And the point here is not to say that Apple is the right choice or the wrong choice, or that people who are loyal to it are right or wrong.

But just to show that it's possible when branding is powerful that we will become so set in our beliefs or feelings about that thing, that we don't even open the door to explore other possibilities. Now let's take a look at branding as it relates to ideas, beliefs, practices, and so on which I'll refer to as idea branding.

This is basically the branding of concepts, beliefs, or practices, and it happens all the time in ways we don't even realize.

And interestingly, I've seen the idea branding tends to get spread in a similar way as the brands of companies through clear sweeping generalizations and simple one liners that we then adopt as truth.

I will never forget the time I walked into my Western doctor's office with this little skin rash underneath one arm that had been there for about two weeks. She asked what deodorant I was using and I said, I'd been using this natural clean deodorant. "Oh, she says, well, that explains it. You never know what's in those natural products.

Just stop using it. It'll probably go away. Come back in a few weeks. If it does." She got up to leave case closed. I kid you not. And my jaw dropped and I pulled out the product that I'd been using and showed her that I did in fact know exactly the ingredients, the very few ingredients that were in it, all of which were clearly identifiable and not made in the lab.

And I pointed out that this deodorant was approved and allowed on the market by the same governing organization, as all other deodorants. I wondered whether she'd be able to clearly identify the ingredients listed on the back of unnatural deodorant. Most of which we can't even pronounce. I also pointed out that I'd been using this product for months and the rash had only existed on one side for the last couple of weeks.

There was no logic in her assessment, even as a licensed medical practitioner, because she had completely lacked curiosity and bypassed all logical reasoning or investigation with a shortcut phrase of belief that is very popular in certain camps of modern medicine. You never know what's in those natural products, AKA natural products equal bad.

the most fascinating part of this is that when I pointed out why this branded thought wasn't the solution and sought to explore and find the accurate diagnosis, she became annoyed and resistant. Resistance to facts that challenge our beliefs while searching for an embracing information that supports them is known as confirmation bias.

None of us are exempt from our biases, even with the best of intentions or the highest of trainings and degrees. What's scary about confirmation bias is that it blocks our ability to fully explore and understand what is.

The antidote to confirmation bias is in my humble opinion, a healthy dose of enthusiastic curiosity. The problem is curiosity can be viewed as straying from your camp and your tribe. If ideological loyalty is a key indicator of belonging in a camp than to explore or even consider other possibilities is like wandering out of the front gate into the wilderness.

But whether you're in a camp that's Democrat or Republican liberal or conservative, wealthy, or impoverished, religious or atheist or anything in between, you may have noticed at one point or another, that towing the middle line, asking questions and getting curious are not tolerated or accepted as well as enthusiastic and unwavering commitment to the group's popular opinion.

I'm not sure when things became this way or if they always have been, but it sometimes feels like if you're not positioned squarely in one camp or another, you're doing something wrong. And if you change your mind, if you decide to wander out in the wilderness on your own and explore and discover for yourself or worse, yet you switch camps.

There can be clear consequences. I've seen people ripped apart online and in the media for daring to be curious. They wandered out of their camp to explore for themselves, and they were canceled, attacked, threatened, dismissed, belittled, unfollowed, and outcast.

I've seen people who ate vegan get attacked, threatened, and abandoned when they got curious about what it would mean for their body to consume meat. I've seen business owners get fired when they suggested peaceful conversation between two opposing camps, instead of expressing the outrage that their camp expected of them. I've seen and experienced Western doctors, belittle and dismiss patients who are curious about alternative treatments beyond pharmaceuticals.

And my very least favorite example is how I've seen an increasing number of people completely dismiss the lived experiences of others, because that experience hasn't yet been broken down into data, quantified, tested, peer reviewed and validated into existence.

When did we get to a place where curiosity and exploration were socially punishable offensives I suppose you could trace similar behaviors back over many points in history.

Galileo, for example, was accused of heresy for suggesting the earth revolved around the sun. And we know how that turned out. The truth is there have been so many times when people who dare to think outside of the popular camps and ask the questions were threatened and outcast as if they'd broken some unspoken rule.

Why do we hold onto our ideas with such a vice grip? Why do we try to force people into one camp or another and assume enemy status of anyone not dwelling within the barbed wire walls of our own fortres? Especially when the idea belief or behavior impacts them in no way at all. Gandhi says the power to question is the basis of all human progress.

In my opinion, we must be allowed to wander into the wilderness on our own. We must be allowed to switch camps or assign to no camp at all.

We must stop trying to force people to stay in our own camp of belief, thought, behavior and practice. My invitation is that we get curious, ask questions, build self-awareness and allow others to do the same.

There's a lot to get curious about, but on this show, we will focus specifically on topics that like somewhere in the intersection of science, spirituality, and self-help.

The topics we are curious about are awe inspiring, expansive, and wonderful. They are not meant to control, limit, or contain, but to expand us into new possibilities. And let me be clear that this podcast does not exist to prove ideas into existence.

We explore a combination of the lived experiences, expertise, research, and wisdom of our guests with open-minded curiosity. If you're looking for a show that thoroughly demystifies, every single topic we cover, or you're looking to be convinced of things before you listen, this is not your show.

The fact is we're not here to convince you of anything. We're here to get curious and explore. I have a few guiding principles that we offer for how to consume this show.

Number one. I invite you to listen for insight, not agreeance.

Please understand that no one has it 100% right. Individuals, belief, systems, methodologies, modalities, philosophies. They can have some things quote, unquote wrong, and some things quote unquote, right. Although right versus wrong, opens up a whole nother can of worms that will leave unopened for.

When we hear something we don't agree with, we can tend to shut down and throw the baby out with the bath water, as they say, essentially discrediting every other thing related to that expression or belief system. The invitation here is to listen for insight, ideas, and inspiration. To make connections between things that you may have never seen before to see a potential new perspective or way of being, doing, or thinking.

To expand yourself into possibility that feels helpful, exciting, and aligned for you. When we open our minds and allow ourselves to hear and process information before we decide about it, if we decide at all, we are giving ourselves the power of exploration and true alignment, instead of continuing about blindly with our existing beliefs or exclusions unchallenged. Hear are the information first then decide what is right for you.

Because only you can make up your mind for yourself.

Number two, embrace the power of the, and, and release the tyranny of the but. We tend to think about things as binary, either or black or white, this or that. A particularly interesting example of this is how the tool of science is commonly thought to be contradictory to spirituality and the mystical.

On the contrary, they absolutely coexist. Science helps us demystify the mystical as illustrated, especially well in recent advances in quantum physics, for example. We sometimes forget that in the distant past, we thought of many things we understand very well today through science, as mystical and magical, like the nature of rain, the comings and goings of the sun, the cooling properties of the Aloe plant and rainbows.

And if you'd gone up to one of these ancient humans and told them you believed that you could send your voice out into the ether, through a device to be heard on the other side of the planet, AKA our current day cell phones, they would've thought you'd lost your mind.

We also tend to forget that we are not at the peak of scientific discovery just as we were not the many times in history. When we thought we understood more than we did.

In: 1897

Isn't it awe inspiring to think that something can be both initiated by a universal spiritual force of which we don't completely understand and follow or expand upon scientifically discovered laws. That new advancements in modern healthcare and ancient wisdom can come together for powerful healing.

That intuition and logic can work together beautifully. As we use both our hearts and our heads to navigate our day to day lives.

As paleo pathologists, Arthur Aufderheide once said, "All knowledge is connected to all other knowledge. The fun is in making the connections."

Many seemingly contradictory things actually coexist as different pieces that when fit together all make up the same giant infinite complex puzzle that is our universe.

Number three, expand into personal and collective possibility.

The very essence of this podcast is to help expand minds and hearts into new positive potentials.

Our mission is to plant more seeds of hope, joy, understanding, and fulfillment through light and open-minded curiosity and exploration. . If you hear something that interests you, we invite you to ride the wave of curiosity or inspiration that may strike, do your own exploration, ask your own questions and come to your own conclusions.

Our hope is that the topics we explore on this podcast and the parts of these conversations that speak to you will expand you into new levels of possibility for yourself and the world.

Thank you for listening to the introduction of the abundantly curious podcast as I laid the foundation for our season one series of guest interviews with fascinating experts on topics at the intersection of science spirituality and self-help.