As children we’re innately curious, asking questions, exploring, uninhibited by societal expectations. However, the older we get, the more we lose touch with the beautiful intrigue we had for the world when we were young. But I believe that we can reconnect with this part of ourselves, I don’t think it goes away, I just think that we learn to suppress it as we get older. Therefore, I think we can learn to embrace and celebrate this part of ourselves again. It just takes some practise and retraining of our brains.

I’ve personally found that reconnecting with the curious, almost childlike part of myself has been really rewarding. It’s allowed me to re-engage with different parts of myself and given me permission to allow time in my life to learn, play, ask questions, and explore. Here’s how… 

Play

What I mean by play is allowing regular time for yourself that’s unstructured. A time when you put the to do list to one side, go to a space you feel safe and comfortable, with people that bring out a positive energy in you, or just on your own. What you do with this time is totally up to you but try not to have a plan. Play can involve being silly and jumping around your kitchen to your favourite tune, singing your heart out in the shower, taking a walk, picking up a pen and drawing or writing whatever comes into your head, laughing until your stomach hurts with a friend, anything that feels right in that moment.

So much of our life is structured and time constrained that we can easily forget what it's like just to play. If you have any children or young people in your life, try spending time with them and allow yourself to be led by their imagination. It really is a freeing experience, allowing us to come out of our heads and our worries.

For me, play is shutting off from the world and focussing all of my attention on my partner, turning my phone off for a whole day, playing music really loud, walking around a place that I’ve never been to before, and being stupid with my friends.

If you really think about it, how often do you schedule play into your life? If you’re struggling to think of the answer, then maybe it’s worth trying to allocate some time just to have fun, in whatever form that takes.

It might sound counterintuitive that you have to plan play into your life, but the more you make time for play, the more it will become a natural part of how you live your life and the more benefits you’ll start to see.

Learn

Learning and exploring new things can also open up parts of ourselves that we had forgotten were there, or that we didn't even know existed in the first place. It can also provide us with a new lease of confidence and an opportunity to meet different people. This doesn't have to be a very time-consuming or expensive thing to do. For example, it might look like teaching yourself the guitar via YouTube or learning to knit. Both of these things can be done from the comfort of your own home and at times that are convenient for you.

Learning can also involve spending time with someone you know well in a different environment, and as a result possibly learning something new about them, or about yourself. When we put ourselves into different situations, these can bring out different sides of us and those around us. Something good to try with a partner that you’ve been with for a long time, or an old friend.

Question your habits

One of the most common ways in which we can begin to feel stuck is when we fall into a pattern of existence day in and day out. It’s always surprising and a little scary how quickly this can creep up on us. For example, you might have to travel to the same place of work Monday-Friday and this might involve you leaving the house at the same time every day, waiting on the same part of the platform for the train, going to the same place for lunch, getting home and watching the same TV shows in the evening.  

Although there are some of these things that you might not be able to or want to change, there are some things that you can. For example, you could walk to the station a different way, change what you do on your lunch break, and plan different things for yourself to do in the evening. By making an effort to do things differently, we are ensuring that we are more conscious and not just living in auto-pilot, switching ourselves off and zoning out. Instead, we want to be tuning into our everyday lives, appreciating what we have, and taking notice of our surroundings.  

Try different things

We can all say that we’re too busy, we’re too tired, we’re too broke, but generally speaking, these are excuses we give ourselves when we’re too afraid to take a leap into the unknown and try something different. If this sounds like you, why not challenge yourself to start something new, however big or small that thing might be? It could be something as simple as reading a new book, or even just joining the local library. A place to start might be writing a list of all of the things that you’d like to do, or that interest you, and then start working through it.

When we spend time doing new and different things it encourages us to be more alert, and as a result we’re more in the moment. That’s why time when we’re away from our daily routine (on holiday for example) always seems to go slower than when we’re stuck in the monotony of everyday life.  

I can say from my own personal experience, that spending time doing something I’ve chosen to invest in is really liberating. I’ve always been a person that’s enjoyed doing new things and meeting new people, but this year I really started to focus on what was important to me and where I wanted to invest my energy. That brought me to the decision to finally start my own coaching business, something I’d been dreaming about for a long time. Once I made that decision, I started to use as much of my time as possible to explore what this might look like, connect with people who were doing similar things for inspiration, write more creatively, and read more. Making that decision to finally follow my dream and invest my time in something different has been a really empowering experience and I encourage you to try something too. Why not do something small that will go towards you achieving that thing you’ve been dreaming about?

If you’re interested in nurturing your curiosity more and making small change in order to feel more purposeful in your life, then check out my free workbooks. There are five in total, and each one is dedicated to certain topics that will help you slow down and tune in to who you are, and what you want. They include exercises, tasks, challenges, anecdotes from my own life, and also a dedicated playlist for each workbook. To download them just scroll to the bottom of my homepage, pop your email address in the box and they’ll get sent straight to your inbox.