Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life
The designers of the book cover knew what they were doing. The jacket is a bright yellow with just the word “Curious?” on the front. It worked. I saw the book in the Self-Development section of Barnes and Noble, picked up the book and opened the table of contents. It is subtitled, Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life. A bold claim. One that for the most part holds up, although I’d modify the author’s claim somewhat.
Todd Kashdan, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at George Mason University, says: “My aim in writing this book is to affect you in two ways. First, by showing you how and why curious exploration is integral to a well-lived life. Second, by providing clear strategies for you to become a curious explorer and to extract greater pleasure and meaning from all of life’s moments and to invest in lasting passions and fulfillment.”
Curious? ties to the previous review I wrote of Mindset in which the author distinguishes between the growth and fixed mindsets and Rapt which holds that “Skillful management of attention is the sine qua non of the good life” and “You cannot always be happy, but you can almost always be focused, which is the next best thing.” I can see that being curious relates to these other concepts. If we have a growth oriented mindset and we’re able to manage our mind’s attention we are also more likely to employ an open curious approach. Our ability to manage our attention to live a fulfilled life. Being rapt entails being engaged and curious.
Overall I feel the author oversells a bit about the role of being curious. Kashdan implicitly admits this because he touches on the importance of mindfulness. I think one way of keeping the key concepts that the books I mentioned above, including Curious?, is to use this acronym: COME – Curiosity, Objectivity, Mindfulness and Engaged.
Still I recommend Curious? because it does identify a new aspect to living well.
