Ask Questions - Unlocking Your Ability To Connect and Staying Young
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I’ve been thinking a lot about questions recently and how much power they have to influence how we connect with others and over our lives in general.
As I've thought more about the role questions play in our life I'm surprised we don't devote more time to it in school. We could probably devote whole semesters of our education to exploring, understanding, and practicing the art of asking questions to learn how to leverage them to influence our lives positively and meaningfully.
Dinner Parties Got Me Asking Questions
I started thinking more about the role questions play in our life while at a few dinner parties recently. It struck me while I was at these different events how few questions were asked when others were sharing.
Isabella Gets Advice
For example, at a recent dinner, Isabella was asked to explain what she did for work, as soon as she finished sharing what she did on a day-to-day basis I was baffled by the general reaction. A few different people started to give her advice, which kind of surprised me because no one asked her any questions about her work, what she liked about it, what challenges she was currently facing and generally did not make an effort to understand what it was she did and how she felt about it.
Why I’m Sharing This Example
I don’t say this to call anyone out, more so to provide context on what made me think more about questions recently. In fact, that was just one example of many and after those dinners, I often wondered why more questions weren’t asked. I also wondered why I more often notice a lack of questions vs. notice an overwhelming amount of questions being asked in conversation. Maybe I'm just being grumpy and spending more time being critical and looking for what is going wrong in conversations than what is going well, but I don't think so because I've made an effort to take note of both.
All of this is anecdotal so it may only represent my experience or the dinners I've been at, but I suspect other people have this experience as well. I don’t know that I have good answers for why this happens but part of me believes it’s because we never really talk about questions all that much or dedicate a meaningful amount of time to understanding their power.
We Also Don't Spend Much Time Learning To Ask Questions
There’s of course the old adage you learn in school “there are no dumb questions” which is wonderfully encouraging and asks us to share what we’re wondering, but it’s largely isolated to an academic context.
Additionally, it's not like sitting in back-to-back classrooms for 9 hours straight is the most effective way to stoke anyone's curiosity so while the sentiment is there, in practice it’s not.
I Think There Are Pressures That Discourage Us From Asking Questions
Asking questions need to be constantly encouraged, but there are so many places where we're discouraged to do so:
Socializing - We want to look cool or not seem dumb and asking questions can sometimes feel like we don't know what we're talking about.
Parents - I've seen people countless times not clarify or ask their parents questions because they don't want to be seen as "not independent" or don't want to get in a situation where their parents interpret their question as them not "knowing what they're doing".
Work - Have also seen this happen lots of times with people at work not asking their bosses or their colleagues questions because it will show that they don't have it together or are "not on top of things".
I know the above is a generalization, but I believe question suppression happens a ton and leads to diminishing curiosity over time.
As a result, I want to dedicate today's newsletter to exploring how to use questions.
Questions Help Us Connect More Deeply With Other People
In my eyes questions are the gateway to connection and, in my opinion, connecting with others is the most rewarding area of life (probably why the “no questions at dinner parties” thing bothers me).
Questions Are The Gateway To Connection
This may sound obvious, but asking questions is about getting to know the people in your life on a deeper level. There is so much to explore there: what their story is, what their perspectives are, how they think, how they see themselves, how they see others, what they are feeling, what happened to them that day, and so on.
To me, questions serve as flashlights helping me shine a light on the people I meet. The understanding gained from shining that light is critical to connecting with people as well as broadening my understanding of the world. I find that it’s in that discovery of who people are that relationships are forged and in many ways, my mind is opened. There are certain principles that I think are key to doing this well and here are a few of mine:
Principles To Using Questions To Connect With Others
Be Genuine - I believe real and strong relationships require authenticity. If you hold part of yourself back or conversely ask without real interest it’s by nature impossible to form strong connections. Connection happens when we feel this intangible attachment to another and that only occurs if we’re showing up as ourselves and we are genuinely interested in the true selves of others.
Really Listen - I shared some of my thinking on how to listen well in this article. The sentiment is if we listen in order to respond or to share an opinion, or through the screen of our own beliefs and desires, true understanding is impossible and as a result, so is connection. If we can’t deeply listen we can’t ask good questions - i.e. ones that help us understand the other person better.
Talk Less - This is related to listening, but earlier in my life, I felt so much excitement to share what I was thinking, how I enjoyed my experiences, and how I was feeling that I ended up tuning others out or taking up too much space. I think part of me generally gets excited about things and wants to share them but I’ve found myself becoming quieter and taking more pleasure in understanding others and the world vs sharing my understandings with others. As a result, conversations are less frenetic, people don’t have to compete for “air time” to talk, and there is more space for connection.
Seek To Understand What The Person Is Communicating Not What Happened - To connect, I think it’s key to focus on understanding what the person is trying to communicate not necessarily on what happened. I think this distinction is important because when we seek to understand what happened, usually it's because we want to give an opinion or form an idea about the situation. When we focus on just understanding what the person is saying it helps people feel seen and heard vs advised.
Take Pleasure In Listening and Understanding - This one is tough and I don’t have a good way to share how I think about it other than over time I reflected on what I learned from being quiet and started to take pleasure in learning more about how people felt and saw the world. This feeling has continued to build up over time and I now I’m disappointed when I reflect on conversations and realize I spent more time sharing than listening or I interrupted often and broke someone’s rhythm.
At dinners or conversations with multiple people, I’ve spent more of my time quiet and asking questions. It’s helped me connect more with others and also realize when I’m in environments that are less stimulating for me - i.e. more competing for air time than a genuine exchange of ideas. Not that there is anything wrong with those environments. I sometimes enjoy being in a place where everyone is loud, gregarious and shouting over each other (family time 🙂) because there is a lot of love, energy, and fun. However, the opposite is something I'd like to see more of (i.e. quietness, asking questions, giving people the floor, not advising just understanding).
In addition to helping us connect more deeply with others questions help us stay curious and young.
Questions Help Us Stay Young and Curious
Questions are the tools we use to nurture our curiosity and staying curious has a dramatic impact on our well-being and longevity.
We Lose Our Curiosity Over Time
Turns out people do in fact get less curious over time, which may have something to do with the fewer questions at dinner parties trend I’m noticing.
In a study led by Dr. Susan Engel, Developmental Psychology teacher and author of the Hungry Mind, she found that curiosity and question asking diminishes quickly as we age. In her study, she observed and measured what she calls “episodes of curiosity” - i.e acts of curiosity such as - asking direct questions, manipulating objects, or periods of intent and directed gazing. Her results showed that during a two-hour stretch these events occurred 2.36 times in Kindergarten vs. only .48 times in a fifth-grade classroom.
In another study, Professor George Land, an author, speaker, consultant, and founder of a research institute that studies the enhancement of creative performance, did a large-scale observational study of children to understand if and how curiosity changes over time. He developed a creativity test and gave it to the same set of 1600 kids when they were 5, 10, and 15. The first time they took the test they scored a 98% on creativity. The second time they took it five years later they scored 30%. The third time they took it only 12%. For adults, it’s even worse, they administered the test to a sample of 280K adults and they only scored 2% ( article here and TedTalk here).
Curiosity Helps You Stay Young
Intuitively this feels right. When I look at kids they never stop asking questions. I’ve noticed that as we get older we tend to ask less and less.
Interestingly, studies show that maintaining a sense of awe and wonder, cultivating curiosity, and actively looking for engaging pursuits help people live longer and stay young. One study, in particular, tracked individuals and demonstrated that individuals who displayed greater curiosity on average were more likely to be alive 5 years later (article).
When I read this it kind of blew my mind.
Our Curiosity Declines As We Age - One, for some reason we learn to ask fewer questions as we get older.
Asking Questions Is Key To A Lot of Things That Help Us Feel Good - Whether it’s connecting more deeply with others, engaging more with the world around us, or pursuing our interests there are a ton of benefits to asking more questions.
Being Curious Even Helps Us Live Longer - This one is self-explanatory but asking questions is even good for our health.
So how should we think about exercising our question muscle?
Thinking Everything Is Awesome Has Helped Me Stay Curious
I’ve always found the world to be a fascinating place and Isabella makes fun of me for how I react whilst in it. If you ask her, the way she’ll characterize me is as someone that says the following "OMG that restaurant was the greatest or that person was the nicest, or I can’t believe how sunny it is here, so on and so forth." While I don’t find being characterized as a walking superlative flattering I do agree that I generally am excited about experiencing the world, learning more about it, and am usually in awe that stuff exists.
I’m sharing this because it’s helped me feel better and has generally made the world a more interesting place to me personally. I really don’t want this to come across as “look at me and look at how curious I am” - I more so am trying to say that spending time thinking about how amazing stuff is - like the fact that we build skyscrapers or doctors literally open people up, pull stuff out, and they’re still alive after, and a million other things - it makes you realize how much you don’t know, how interesting stuff is and prompts you to ask more questions.
Here are some of the principles I think are generally important to staying curious and asking more questions
How To Stay Curious
Getting To Know People - It’s almost certain that you’ll interact with someone you don’t know enough about on a daily basis. A colleague, the door(wo)man in your lobby, a fellow dog walker, etc. I like to get to know these people. It’s an amazing way to learn about the world, people’s perspectives, and the variety of backgrounds that have shaped those humans. I probably learned this from my parents. When we would travel my dad would ask the taxi driver, the hotel person, the waiters, basically everyone a million questions to learn about them and their country. He got up to speed on wherever we were traveling to so quickly by doing that and the whole trip was more fun as a result. My mom really cares about people. As a result, she’s just a badass listener and makes people feel good so they share a ton with her, she absorbs info like a sponge, is extremely empathetic, and can connect with pretty much anyone. They’re my role models and they’ve helped me appreciate asking questions to get to know people.
Asking Questions About Things I Don’t Understand - Your friend who works in fintech, your dog trainer, your friend’s uncle who lives in Arkansaw, your partner that’s reading about a new thing - all these people are learning stuff that I don’t know about. Being interested helps me expand my mind, helps me connect with people in the world no matter the conversation, and contributes to my sense of wonder and awe of the world I live in. I confess I don’t always react favorably when Isa is sharing a passage from the book she’s reading, but I am making an effort to be interested no matter what because I usually don’t regret it when I take that approach.
Do Things You’ve Never Done Regularly - I try to default to saying yes to something I’ve never done. I’ve found I usually never regret making those decisions and it has helped me discover how fascinating the world is and how much of it I enjoy. I think we tend to find things we like and don’t want to risk not enjoying something so we default to what we know (humans perceive losses more strongly than gains). As a result, I try to actively look for new things to do like going to Staten Island for the first time or freestyling.
Read Constantly - There are so many lives and experiences captured on the page that can introduce you to new ideas, accelerate your thinking, and expand your mind that reading has to be part of your curiosity arsenal. Whether it’s a newsletter, a book, articles, essays, etc. reading is a breath of fresh air that I personally love.
Writing - I used to do this a lot more when I was younger and I’m happy I’ve gotten back to it with this newsletter and my journal, but writing is an amazing way to explore what I think. I learn a ton about myself and other subjects in the process. It’s also a good place to question how I’m thinking, acting, and feeling. It’s a useful tool to turn the questions inwards and find out more about yourself.
Cultivate A Diverse Friend Group - Hanging out with people from all walks of life is another amazing way to stay curious. Isabella and I are fortunate that we’ve met such amazing people and they’re all so different. Different interests, socioeconomic classes, races, personalities, talents, stages of life, types of work, experiences had, age, etc. and it’s just really freaking fun to be constantly exposed to stuff, ideas, and perspectives we know nothing about.
Go Incredibly Deep on Random Things - I’m biased here because I have kind of odd, random interests that I’ll pursue for a while, but I think it’s a great way to not only have a ton of fun but also as a way to develop your ability to learn and be curious. I’ve never regretted spending a weird amount of time on things - learning to do handstands or exploring practical psychology.
All of these different approaches help cultivate the ability to ask more and better questions and I think it’s worth spending time reflecting on how to be more curious about others and the world. I think we’ll feel better, connect more deeply, and possibly live longer.
I also think it would make our dinner parties more engaging.
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To Living Well,
Alvaro
100 baby!