If You Want to Know If Someone Is Worth Your Time, Use the Ted Lasso Curiosity Rule
It works every time
Good TV scenes are, in their essence, well-observed reflections of real life.
Like when Ted Lasso — the lovable mid-Western football coach on Apple TV’s show of the same name — is challenged to a darts match with the show’s baddie Rupert who assumes he can’t play.
Rupert assumed wrong.
Just before he hits the target that wins him the game, Ted comes out with this little monologue:
Guys have underestimated me my entire life. And for years I never understood why, it used to really bother me.
Then one day I was driving my little boy to school and I saw this quote by Walt Whitman. It said: be curious, not judgemental.
I like that.
So I get back in my car and it hits me. All of them fellas that used to belittle me, not a single one of them were curious. They thought they had everything all figured out so they judged everything and they judged everyone.
And I realized that their underestimating of me — who I was had nothing to do with it. Because if they were curious they would have asked questions. Questions like, have you played a lot of darts, Ted? Which I would have…
