How To Instill A Sense Of Adventure, Exploration And Curiosity In Kids – AND YOURSELF

Curiosity and imagination are very undervalued skills

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

How often are you in awe? Do you still have a sense of wonder like back in the times when you were a child? Do you miss feeling adventurous once in a while?

Rushing through life we are not taking the time anymore to look, observe, wonder or follow our curiosity. If that’s not bad enough, we even impose that on our children. 

We don’t allow ourselves to slow down to give space to curiosity, intuition, imagination, and a sense of awe.

“How do you find awe? You allow unstructured time. You wander. You drift through. You take a walk with no aim. You slow things down. You allow for mystery and open questions rather than test-driven answers” writes Psychologist Dacher Keltner, the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley.

Natural Play And Exploring

Going back some decades kids were playing outside, on the streets, in parks and forests. Without too much oversight, they just played outdoors until they returned home for dinner, hungry and exhausted from play. 

I remember spending my summers in the countryside at my aunt’s place and just hanging outside with the other kids in the fields, at the little river, in the forest and when it got dark, we strolled back home. We came up with all sorts of games, creating wild stories, pretending to be knights, cowboys, hunters, or god knows what.

Some period of unstructured time gives children the freedom, space, and tools to discover ideas, possibilities, and their interests.

• Do you send your kids outside, without the obligatory smartphone, and tell them to be bored and use their fantasy to come up with ideas for playing?

• Do you go outside for a walk with an open curious mind to let your imagination run wild?

Finding Your Way Without Navigation

What a great gift those GPS navigation systems and google maps on our phones are. How did people ever survive and found their way before GPS came to our rescue?

We love to give up our independent sense of orientation and situational awareness and instead hand it over to those systems. No question that navigation systems are an enormous help to finding our way, if on wheels or on foot. 

But we have also become dependent on them. We not only lost our sense of orientation and memory for finding our way, but we also lost a sense of adventure and curiosity.

• If walking through the city, hiking the forest, or driving the car for leisure try to switch off the navigation voice and pull your head out of your phone map. Recalibrate your sense of orientation and curiosity. Very often you can find some pleasant surprise, unknown wonder by following your intuition and turning around a corner your digital navigator would never have told you.

Sparking Interest For Other Cultures, Traditions, And Countries

Probably not too many households stack National Geographic magazines anymore. They were a window into foreign cultures and traditions, into wildlife and explorers’ journeys. 

Yes, of course, that is what is the internet for today and we can see and research even way more than what a 140-page magazine could provide.

But, honestly, what are your kids and you scroll through on the phone? 

With our multicultural societies today and digital programs we can learn about different cultures, a new language, or find recipes from another culture. All things that not only spark new insights and understanding but also offer ideas you can transfer to your subject matter for finding solutions.

• How about attending a cultural festival in your area, going to an ethnic restaurant, visiting a museum with artifacts from god knows where, or letting your kids act out a folk tale?

Making Something Out Of Nothing

Some months ago, I had set up a photography workshop in which the instructor, after half an hour of introduction, sent each participant (advanced photographers) off with a nice tree branch and the task to create a picture with the branch or stick. "Pictures out of nothing" was the title of the workshop. 

The image results were absolutely impressive. Eight completely different visions and creative photographs came out at the end of the day. 

• Sometimes being limited to your imagination and a minimum of ingredients “forces” you to tap into the creative department inside of you. And you’ll be surprised and proud that you uncovered that part inside of you.

NUDGE

• Can we get our sense of exploration, adventure, and curiosity back?

• Walk around with open eyes, situational awareness, and a sense of wonder.

• “Travel, especially of the old laborious kind, has never seemed to me of greater importance, more essential, more enlightening”, writes travel writer Paul Theroux

• Sometimes it’s worth switching off the navigator, observing your surroundings, and following your inspiration for finding some exciting new territory.

• Allow yourself to slow down to give space to curiosity, intuition, imagination, and a sense of awe.

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BOOK Recommendation

Imagine: How creativity works - by Jonah Lehrer (2012)

How do you measure the imagination? How do you quantify an epiphany? Creativity is not a single gift possessed by the lucky few. It's a variety of distinct thought processes that we can all learn to use more effectively. The book reveals the importance of embracing the rut, thinking like a child, daydreaming productively, and adopting an outsider's perspective (travel helps).

I saw Jonah Lehrer in 2012 in San Francisco on stage talking about his book. It was interesting and inspiring. I bought the book and really like it.