The photographer you’d love to hang. The writer you’d like to shelve.

How crazy is it that we are so often the ones who talk ourselves out of the very things we want to do?

For years I set aside ideas, dreams and projects, telling myself that the life I wanted would somehow compromise the other parts of my life I valued.

Of course, that wasn’t really true.

The insecure, immature voice inside me was trying to protect what it believed was important. Whenever I did venture into something adventurous, my inner saboteur made sure I suffered enough to confirm its warnings.

It took a while, and a few emotional wounds, to recognise the dynamic at work.

So much of what we imagine is our own navigation through life can actually be guided by an over-careful worrier within.

I’m not a trained professional, nor even a writer by profession. I’m simply someone who became curious about what was happening inside my own decision-making — and wanted to explore what I found.

This isn’t a course, a workbook or a manual. It’s an exploration of what happens when we become curious about the forces that influence our choices — including the ones we don’t always notice.

Two ways of seeing

There is the world we look at, and there is the world we have learned to see.

Most of the time, we don’t notice the difference.

We see a job as a job, a home as a home, success as success, security as security. We recognise the familiar patterns around us and, because everyone else seems to recognise them too, they rarely need explaining.

But curiosity allows us to step slightly outside the picture.

We can begin to notice not only what is there, but the assumptions that tell us what it means.

A journey can become more than a destination.
A photograph can become more than a picture.
A change in circumstance can become more than an inconvenience.

And a life that once seemed simply to be the way things are can become something we are capable of looking at again.

Not necessarily to change it.

Just to see it.

And then the question turns inward

If we can learn to look differently at the world around us, perhaps we can do the same with our own lives.

Why do we make the choices we make?

Where did our ideas about a successful life come from?

And how much of the life we have constructed is actually a response to what we believe we should have, should do, and should be?

These aren’t necessarily difficult questions.

They can simply be interesting ones.

Because sometimes curiosity doesn’t tell us that something is wrong.

It simply gives us permission to look again.

Adventure begins with curiosity

Adventure, for me, has never been simply about going somewhere new. It is about becoming curious enough to look again — to question what I think I know, to notice what I might otherwise miss, and to allow the unexpected to change the story I thought I knew.

Curious to see where it leads?

Come and explore some of the stories, adventures and observations

The ideas we build our lives around

We inherit ideas about what a good life should look like — what we should have, what we should do, and ultimately who we should be.

We build our lives around those ideas. We make choices, form relationships, pursue careers, acquire possessions and establish routines — often without questioning the assumptions that gave rise to them in the first place.

And this is where things become interesting. The life we build around those assumptions can work remarkably well — until it doesn’t. Circumstances change, priorities shift, and what once seemed to provide security, success or happiness can begin to feel strangely restrictive.

We are often taught to build life from the outside in: Have, Do, Be. Have the right things. Do the right things. Become the person that life appears to expect us to be.

But what happens if we turn that sequence around? Be, Do, Have.

The problem is that the two sequences can produce very different lives.

When we begin with Have, we tend to ask what we need to acquire or achieve before life can feel right. When we begin with Be, the question changes: who do I want to be, and what kind of life would naturally follow from that?

Neither approach is entirely wrong. We all have practical things to deal with — money, work, relationships, responsibilities, possessions, plans. The difficulty begins when the things we acquire and the things we do become a substitute for the person we actually want to become.

And that tension is rarely resolved once and for all. Life keeps changing. Circumstances change. Our priorities change. Sometimes the life that once fitted us begins to feel strangely uncomfortable — not because it was necessarily wrong, but because we have changed.

That, perhaps, is where curiosity becomes useful. It gives us permission to look again.

We rarely notice the tension while everything is working.

We simply keep going.

We adapt, compromise, accommodate and adjust. A career becomes a way of life. A relationship becomes an identity. A home becomes a measure of security. A routine becomes reassuring because it is familiar.

The choices we made yesterday quietly become the assumptions we live by tomorrow.

And, for a while, that can work remarkably well.

Until something changes.

Sometimes the change is obvious — a job ends, children leave home, a relationship alters, money becomes tighter, or a familiar routine disappears.

Sometimes it is much quieter.

We simply wake up one morning and realise that the life we carefully constructed no longer feels quite like ours.

Not necessarily because anything has gone wrong.

Perhaps because we have changed.

That is where curiosity becomes interesting.

It doesn’t demand that we abandon the life we’ve built.

It simply allows us to ask whether the life we have built still fits the person we are becoming.

That is where the tension begins.

The patterns we live within are not necessarily bad patterns.

Quite the opposite.

Shared expectations are part of what allows societies to function. We learn how to cooperate, how to care for one another, how to work, raise families, build communities and trust people we may never meet.

Without some degree of social agreement, human beings might never have managed to live together on anything like the scale we do.

So this isn’t an argument against conformity.

It is an invitation to notice it.

Because there is a difference between living according to a pattern and being aware that we are doing so.

And that difference can become interesting when curiosity asks:

Is this still the pattern I want?

Life doesn’t move in straight lines

We tend to imagine life as a progression. We grow up, learn, work, build relationships, acquire experience and, eventually, arrive at some point where we expect things to make sense.

But real life rarely behaves like that.

We move forward, then back. We begin things, settle into them, become restless, change direction, let things go and begin again.

Sometimes the change is dramatic. More often it is barely noticeable until, looking back, we realise that we have somehow become a different person from the one who made the decisions that brought us here.

Perhaps life is less a straight line than a series of cycles.

We encounter something new. We explore it. We settle into it. We discover what works — and what doesn’t. Eventually, something changes.

We adapt, or resist. We hold on, or let go.

And then, in some form, we begin again.

What interests me is what happens inside those cycles.

Because the tension isn’t simply between where we are and where we want to be.

It is often between the person we have become, the person we think we are supposed to be, and the person we are quietly becoming.

The pattern is familiar.

A new possibility catches our attention. Something begins.

Then comes the practical business of making it real. We establish routines, commitments and structures. We make it part of our lives.

Eventually, something shifts. What once felt right may no longer fit. We question, adapt, resist or change.

And eventually, something has to be released — an expectation, a role, a relationship, a possession, a habit, or simply an idea of who we thought we were.

Then there is space for something new.

And then the cycle begins again.

Curiosity has its own tension

We are fortunate, in much of the Western world, to live with considerable freedom to question the lives we have inherited.

We can change careers, leave relationships, travel alone, alter our beliefs, start again — or simply ask whether the life we have constructed is still the one we want.

There is, for the most part, nothing particularly dangerous about being curious.

But that doesn’t mean it is always comfortable.

The moment we begin to question the assumptions around which our lives have been organised, other people may begin to wonder what is happening to us.

Family may worry.

Friends may become curious in return.

Colleagues may wonder why we are suddenly doing things differently.

Sometimes the people who know us best can be the least comfortable with our questions — not because they wish us harm, but because our questioning can unsettle assumptions that we share.

After all, if I begin asking whether the life I have been living is really the life I want, I am not only examining my own choices.

I may, quite unintentionally, be questioning choices that others have made too.

And that can create a curious social tension.

We are generally encouraged to be curious about the world.

We are rather less encouraged to become too curious about the assumptions on which our own lives are built.

Perhaps that is because curiosity is easier when it concerns what is out there than when it turns around and asks:

Why am I living like this?

And even that question doesn’t demand an answer.

It simply gives us permission to look again.

The familiar sequence

Have the right things.
Do the right things.
Become the right sort of person.

It sounds perfectly reasonable.

And, in many ways, it is.

We are surrounded by ideas about what a successful life should look like. They come to us quietly — through family, education, culture, advertising, conversation, the people around us and the stories we are told about what a successful life looks like.

Some of those ideas become so familiar that we stop experiencing them as ideas at all.

They begin to feel like facts.

This is what a good life looks like.
This is what a responsible person does.
This is what someone like me should have achieved by now.

And because these assumptions are shared by the people around us, they can be remarkably reassuring.

We don’t have to question them very often because everyone seems to be following roughly the same map.

Until we aren’t.

Perhaps this is where curiosity becomes interesting.

We can begin to notice that much of what we have built may have followed a familiar sequence:

Have → Do → Be.

Have the right things.

Do the right things.

Become the right sort of person.

But what happens if we turn the sequence around?

Be → Do → Have.

Who do I want to be?

What would that person naturally do?

And what might follow from that?

Neither sequence is entirely wrong.

We all have practical things to deal with — money, work, relationships, responsibilities, possessions and plans.

The difficulty begins when the things we acquire, and the things we do, become a substitute for the person we actually want to become.

And that is where curiosity can become useful.

Not because one sequence is universally right and the other universally wrong.

But because we can begin to notice which sequence we are living inside.

The important thing is that the choice becomes visible.

And perhaps that is where curiosity becomes more than an interest in the world around us. It becomes a capacity to examine the world we have constructed for ourselves — and, if we wish, to decide what happens next.