Curiosity Kills the Critic
Opening our hearts and minds – By Stacey Huget
Imagine if every time we passed a judgment – be it about ourselves, or others, or the world around us – we became curious instead. Imagine how much space we’d open up in our minds and our hearts. Imagine how much lighter we would feel.
We all know how relentless that “judgy” critic inside our heads can be – spewing out scorn like poison from a spray-gun.
Turning it off can be hard.
I remember being challenged by a counsellor many years ago to “suspend my judgments” for just a single morning. I lasted all of five minutes before the voice in my head started silently slagging my bus-mates on the ride home. The most I could achieve were mere moments of inner peace before the nattering would start up again. It struck me then how polluted my head was. This negativity, this need to lash out and belittle – this was my inner life. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like that I hadn’t really noticed it before. And I especially didn’t like how trapped I was within it.
Our inner critic may be a defense mechanism, a way we’ve learned to protect ourselves in some way – but it doesn’t really serve us.
Think about it.
We slag ourselves to dull our fears of not fitting in or measuring up, or to pre-empt imagined slights from others – but all it does is keep us small, keep us in a place of self-loathing, a place of giving up.
We demean others to gain an upper hand or cast ourselves in a better light – but all it does is invite disconnection, bogging us down in the mud of our own meaningless comparisons, in our own fool’s quest for superiority.
We rail against those events and circumstances and conversations that offend us – but all it does is keep us in opposition, resisting that which doesn’t yield, deepening our own hurt and powerlessness.
Most of us yearn for a kinder, gentler “us” within us. But how do we interrupt that punishing, vitriolic narrative?
The answer: Become curious. It’s a surefire way to kill our nasty inner critic.
Instead of closing ourselves off in caustic spew, we can open ourselves up by asking questions, by learning what we don’t know. Because in that vast territory of what we don’t know – vaster still, of what we don’t even know we don’t know – is understanding and compassion.
As Buddha said: To understand everything is to forgive everything.
Instead of lashing out at others’ behaviors and opinions, their backgrounds and performance – we can become curious. What is it that we need to understand about this person? Why might they be doing what they do? What is their perspective?
Instead of bickering and provoking and pulling away from others, and especially from those we love – we can become curious. How might they be feeling? What is it that they need from us? What is in the way of us connecting?
And again, instead of constantly deriding and castigating who we are and how we’re showing up – we can become curious. What do we truly want in this moment? How would we rather show up? What are we capable of – and why are we so afraid of stepping into our own potential?
There is no weakness in the phrase “I don’t know … tell me about that … help me understand.” What there is, is courage. We are inviting in the truth of things, declaring our confidence to deal with what is, rather than what we prefer to believe.
There is an incredible lightness in being open to discovering that what’s actually going on – within us, for others, in the world – is not what we thought it was. It lets us off the sharp hook of our preconceptions. It’s like opening a window and having a breeze wash over us, diffusing the stale air of our own tired chatter. Suddenly we can breathe and move and choose in a way that serves us.
None of which is to say we shouldn’t have values, beliefs, opinions. We just don’t have to believe every thought we have. Deciding something because it’s easy or because we think it protects or bolsters us up is not the same as knowing. It’s not the same as truth.
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions, said Leonardo Da Vinci more than five hundred years ago.
There is an incredible lightness in being open to discovering that what’s actually going on – within us, for others, in the world – is not what we thought it was. It lets us off the sharp hook of our preconceptions. It’s like opening a window and having a breeze wash over us, diffusing the stale air of our own tired chatter. Suddenly we can breathe and move and choose in a way that serves us.
Curiosity takes us out of ourselves, and that is a profound beginning.
We begin to accept that the world is as it is and not how we want it to be – and that there’s no loss in that, only liberation from the pain of delusion, from pointless resistance. We begin to see that it is our judgments, our reactions, our posturing that are weighing us down and binding us up, setting us in opposition, keeping us apart.
Accepting and opening up to others with wonder similarly invites intimacy and closeness. We are saying “I want to see you and hear you and understand you.” Letting others’ truth mingle with our own, and ours with theirs, is not threatening. It’s the basis of connection, the springboard to a richer, more expansive experience of what’s possible.
An exhilarating freedom arises when we question our habitual ways of being, when we search our motivations and needs and abilities not with derision and attack, but with compassion and curiosity and courage. We interrupt our punishing narrative to discover who we are – only to find we are so much more loving and strong and able than we’d ever imagined.
Curiosity takes us out of our heads into our whole bodies. The energy of wonder flows through our being. It rewards us not with answers, but with glimpses of truth – one of which is that there are always more questions.
Another paradox.
If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation, said Krishnamurti.
Yes, curiosity changes everything – ourselves, others, the world. A single question can unearth new perspectives, invite new possibilities, deliver us to our deeper insight from which fresh choices spring.
We are suddenly showing up differently in the world – and feeling better about all of it.
The killing of our inner critic, a justifiable homicide if ever there was one.
