Why Feed Curiosity Daily

7/20/2022

Dear Why Team member,
I hope this week’s message finds you well, encouraged, and curious.

Audio:🗣

Recently, I posted a blog titled Why Read. Since beginning my Media Fast this past May, my reading of books has soared - and the gifts from reading that I received for so many years of my life, has returned with a wonderful vengeance.

In my blog on reading, I spoke on how insights I gained from reading multiple books at a time would start to merge and complement each other, providing connections and insights that fuel my creativity. It’s just like putting together a great meal. Taken individually, some ingredients my not be all that appetizing but when blended together with others, they can make a great meal. I now realize that being into multiple books at a time, reading a little of this one and a little of that one, daily, has been a powerful ingredient in the Rocket Fuel formula that has fueled my life.

Why?

Apparently, there is a science behind what happens to us during our reading of books - that has created for me a love of reading. And luckily for me, specifically, the reading of multiple books at the same time - an activity I only began so that I would never become a non-reader again.

We have all had the experience of reading a book that doesn’t call you back - how best to hack for that? Read multiple books at a time, just grab a book off your shelf and read a page or two - if it calls you back, great, if not, move on - we don’t have enough time to read all the books, much less waste time on books we don’t enjoy. Some say, “at least read the first chapter, hate to quit on a great book that‘s just warming up.”

Interestingly enough, one of my current reads is a book titled
The Art of IMPOSSIBLE, by Steven Kotler, and from which I received the “why” behind my experience.

Chapter 2 is tilted The Passion Recipe and, it is a big part of the ingredients that make up my Rocket Fuel:
Pattern Recognition!
The best part is that it happens automatically!! It just needs to be fed!!

Paraphrasing what Steven shares in his book:

Our minds are powerful pattern recognizers. They just need new information to make new connections. The formula is
curiosity = learning = pattern recognition = dopamine.
The Dopamine, our feel good, love of life chemical, can then drive a powerfully beneficial feedback loop - driving more curiosity, curiosity leading to more learning - learning providing more information for the brain to find connections and patterns - bringing more dopamine and more feelings of living our BEST LIFE EVER!!

And the last and most important Rocket Fuel ingredient? Purpose!!
When it all comes together in service to others, we get the best feedback loop of all - and a life more fun to live.

I hope this blog has made you curious enough to read Steven Kotler’s book The Art of Impossible.

Consider being more intentional with the ingredients that can optimize and fuel an extraordinary life - making more possible the impossible.

Make it a great week!

Steve Luckenbach

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