Episode 01: Why We Get Stuck - And How Curiosity Can Free Us
We may feel stuck, personally or professionally.
We feel like we have no other choices, no alternate paths ahead. Most often times with deep frustration, exhaustion and eventually, resignation. We tell ourselves life is meant to be like that.
To get unstuck, we need to challenge that inertia to self-awareness, and by gently being curious with ourselves on how we got there.
“People get stuck - they don’t seem to realise that there are different ways of understanding work, even if they do have a choice... and the white collar professionals who think of work as ‘suffering’, as a necessary cost to staying alive.””
I am inspired by what Dalglish Chew blogs about, in his signature long-form style that are insightful reads, reflecting his deep thinking and curiosity about each topic - from suffering and tension, to giving effective feedback. In this episode, he opens up authentically about comfortably being “invisible” and the realisation that there is no time like now to be showing up at work and for others.
Curiosity draws his innate quieter and sensitive self towards people - and he is fascinated by how we interact with each other, how we get stuck in compulsive habits that we can’t break out of, feeling like we are retreading the same ground over and over.
And sometimes, as Dalglish shares, it goes right back to our childhoods, how we learnt in our early years what “worked” to keep us safe and happy, so we keep defaulting to them even as adults. His work as a coach helps clients to unpack that, peeling layer by layer to uncover the person that they were - and what they are meant to be.
“The best kind of work taps into your unique gifts or superpower - which sometimes (surprisingly) can come from a place of pain.”
As an ex-management consultant, he understands how stuckness can occur and how tapping into your own unique gifts can help unlock that. He talks about perfectionism, micromanaging, and the difficulty to change as senior leaders and founders who find it difficult to let go. There is usually safety wrapped up in our habits - one needs courage to pursue outside the comfort zone.
While courage and curiosity goes hand-in-hand, he also mulls over the polar opposite - the fear of pursing curiosity - which could be against retaliation, damaging of reputation, and maybe the deepest one, the fear of finding out what the real answer is.
The idea of “rebel curiosities” to him is an interesting one as a productive tension - where “rebels” connote having the external orientation, the bravery to fight, and “curiosity” as internal, non-judgemental nature to seek and understand. In today’s world, we need leaders who can do the deep work to understand themselves and others - and then show up to challenge the status quo and make a change.