The Simple Question You Are Forgetting to Ask
Why childlike curiosity should never be discouraged
WHEN I WAS A KID I USED TO ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS. I was super curious about the world around me and just wanted to know what the heck was going on. I would latch onto something that seemed strange in my life and ask about it until I found the answer… or until I got bored and moved onto the next thing.
One of my favourite questions was “why?”. And I would often use this deeply inquisitive question on my dad by asking something that my clueless childlike brain either had not yet experienced or could not understand.
It would start off simple and look like something like this:
Me: Dad, why do I have to brush my teeth?
Dad: Because it’s good for you.
Me: Why?
Dad: Because if you don’t your teeth will get dirty.
Me: Why?
Dad: Because when you eat food all day little bits of food can get stuck between your teeth and that’s bad.
Me: Why?
Dad: Because there is something called ‘plaque’ that sticks to your teeth and if you don’t brush it off then your teeth will fall out. That’s why Derek!
Me: Hmmm, okay. That makes sense.
‘The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
– Albert Einstein
I don’t remember a ton of the details from my childhood, but I do remember asking a lot of questions. And I certainly remember going down the “why spiral” many, many times.
But somewhere along the way, I lost that curiosity. Someone told me to shut up and stopped asking so many questions. People laughed at me when I didn’t know something and I tried to find out by asking why. And soon enough I started to believe that being curious was a bad thing and if I didn’t know something that my peers knew, then something must be wrong with me.
But as I’ve gotten older and matured, I’ve realized a very important yet simple rule of life. You don’t have to listen to someone if you don’t want to. So that’s exactly what I’ve done. I have reverted back to my childhood and begun to ask why again.
Because of this I have not only been able to understand more about the world and the people around me but have learned waaaay more about myself.
And this is the lesson I hope you will take from all of this; That if you are struggling to understand what is happening in your life, why you are feeling a certain way, where your life is heading, or failing to grasp why you are doing what you are doing. Start asking yourself a very simple question:
Why?
And don’t let yourself be satisfied with just one “why”. Ask it twice, three times, four times, and maybe even five times to get to the bottom of what is really going on.
Here’s an example of what that might look like:
You just had a really rough practice and you are feeling exceptionally low in confidence and sad about your performance.
You: Why are you feeling sad?
Yourself: Because I had a bad practice.
You: Why?
Yourself: Because I’m not performing very well.
You: Why?
Yourself: I feel tired and sluggish.
You: Why?
Yourself: I’ve been eating really bad and staying up late.
(now some people might stop here, which is fine, but let’s go deeper)
You: Why?
Yourself: Because I’m not motivated enough to care about what I’m eating.
You: Why are you not motivated?
Yourself: I don’t really have any goals or reasons for going to practice every day.
You: Why?
Yourself: Because I haven’t sat down and taken the time to create my goals for this season and understand the value of my daily actions towards long-term development.
You: Bingo! Now get to work.
I think we sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that our lives are incredibly complex. As a result, we begin to see our problems as a million-piece puzzle that would take years to properly solve. Which ultimately causes us to shy away from simple questions because they seem far too obvious.
However, it’s these simple questions when asked with a true sense of curiosity that actually get to the root of the problem.
The vast majority of the time you have the answers to these “complex” problems already floating around inside your childlike brain, but you are jumping past the most basic of questions in order to find the answer.
You are forgetting to start with WHY.
– Derek
