Curiosity Chronicle

There’s a beautiful Zen parable that goes something like this:

A man is walking across a field when a tiger leaps out from the trees and runs toward him.

Fearing for his life, the man sprints away but quickly halts at a steep cliff. Facing a terrifying drop, with the tiger bearing down on him, he grabs hold of a single vine and lowers himself over the cliff’s edge.

Looking up, he sees the tiger above. Looking down, he notices another tiger pacing on the ground below. And to make matters worse, a small mouse begins gnawing at the vine that holds him in place.

Beginning to feel hopeless, with certain demise above and below, the man sees a single wild strawberry growing on the cliffside in front of him.

He reaches out, plucks the fruit, and eats it. He smiles.

How incredibly sweet it tasted.

I just found myself rereading that parable at 30,000 feet.

Let me explain why...
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This episode brought to you by:
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Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

My son just turned four. One of the things I love most about the age is the unbridled curiosity with which he explores the world.

He's deep in the classic "why" phase, taking me down explanatory rabbit holes that go long past my point of comfort.

But one of the most interesting prompts he asked recently was this one:

"Tell me all about zippers."

On any given day, zipper is replaced by some basic thing that we interact with. It might be tell me all about our car, or trees, or cooking pans, or the microwave.

I have a rule that I always engage with him on these little curiosity quests, even if they come at a bad time.

In doing so, I've realized something:

I know very little about how the most basic things around me actually work.
I start confidently, but my ability to answer "tell me all about [X]" generally ends after a few seconds. I quickly reach the outer bounds of my understanding and am forced, hat in hand, to consult with the internet to go deeper.
As it turns out, there's real science behind this...

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This episode brought to you by:
DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

A few years ago, as part of the research for my ​first book​, I asked a group of centenarians for the advice they'd most like to give to their younger selves.

One of them offered this piece of wisdom:

"The most damning lie you can tell is the lie you tell to yourself."
Those lies dilute your attention, pull you toward distractions, and cut into your confidence. They give you an easy out when the truth requires more painful accountability.

Those lies keep you from running at full power. Self-protection that becomes self-rejection.

In the years since that conversation, I've often found myself reflecting on the comment as a thought experiment for my own life:
What are the lies I'm telling myself right now?

Through identifying those lies, I've slowly learned to stopped telling them.

Here are 7 lies I finally stopped telling myself...
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This episode brought to you by:
DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

In 2004, a Finnish-American photographer named Arno Minkkinen gave the commencement speech at the New England School of Photography.

In the speech, he offered a powerful thought experiment:

Imagine for a moment that you find yourself at the large bus station in the center of Helsinki.

There are two dozen platforms at the station, each with several different bus lines departing from them bound for a wide array of destinations outside the city.

Each of the different bus lines departing from a given platform follows the same route for a few miles to get out of the city.

Minkkinen likened this experience to the early years of a career:

You pick your platform, which sets your general direction, and then select a bus line to hop on from the platform...

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This episode brought to you by:
DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.

In 1918, German theoretical physicist Max Planck won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of energy quanta.

After winning the prize, he went on a tour, giving lectures at universities and institutions around the country on his findings.

There’s an apocryphal story from that tour that I first came across while reading the transcript of Charlie Munger’s 2007 commencement speech at USC Law School.

Max Planck’s chauffeur, after having heard Planck practice and deliver the talk so many times, had the entire thing memorized.

He jokingly asked Planck if he could deliver it at the final lecture.

Surprisingly, the physicist agreed...

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This episode brought to you by:
DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online. 
Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, investments, and net worth—all in one place.
Innerbody Labs - A Higher Standard. After reviewing thousands of health products, we built formulas we wished existed.
Lemon - The Al agent that turns your voice instructions into finished tasks.