Coach Ted Lasso helped me get through the early stages of the COVID-19 apocalypse.
Amidst a world of fear, anger, sadness, and confusion…Ted Lasso was a bright spot.
There’s one particular scene from Season 1 that still resonates: Ted playing darts against a jerk he really wants to beat. This clip is worth a 4-minute (re)watch:
In it, Ted talks about an important lesson we can all apply:
“Guys have underestimated me my entire life.
And for years I never understood why. It used to really bother me. But then one day I was driving my little boy to school and I saw this quote by Walt Witman, it was painted on a wall there.
It said, ‘Be curious, not judgmental.’
I liked that.
All them fellas, that used to belittle me, not a single one of them were curious.
You know, they thought they had everything all figured out, so they judged everything, and judged everyone. And I realize that they’re underestimating me…who I was had nothing to do with it.
Because if they were curious, they would have asked questions. You know, questions like, ‘Have you played a lot of darts, Ted?’
Which I would have answered, ‘Yessir, every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father, from age 10 to age 16 until he passed away.’ Barbecue sauce.”
Bullseye, WINNER!”
This dovetails nicely with author Elizabeth Gilbert’s advice on creativity:
“Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living. Curiosity is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.”
Which brings me to today’s lesson.
Whether we’re trying to lose weight or change our diet or finally run a 5K, we can do ourselves a massive favor along the way:
We can remove judgment from our repertoire.
Specifically, we can stop judging ourselves, and instead get curious!
- “Oh that’s interesting, I ate a whole pint of ice cream this afternoon. I wonder what caused that….oh yeah, I had a garbage day at work and my kids were screaming and I missed my therapy appointment this week!”
- “Oh wow, I got triggered when my partner asked me to take the trash out and I freaked; it wasn’t about the trash, it was that I was feeling cornered and stretched too thin.”
- “Fascinating, I skipped my workout this week again because I told myself I didn’t have time, when the reality was that I was afraid of going to a bootcamp class because I have a negative self-image and don’t want to embarrass myself in class.”
This is how we stop “trying harder” and instead “try smarter.” We go a level deeper into the root cause of why we’re struggling to build a new routine or make a change that sticks.
So! Let’s try curiosity instead of judgment, and see where that gets us. It can lead to some insights that allow us to break these patterns and start to do things differently. And if it’s good enough for Ted Lasso and Elizabeth Gilbert, it’s probably good enough for us nerds.
Oh, what’s that, Ted and Liz aren’t enough for you?
Fine, here’s one more quote for your brain, from Ram Dass, reminding us that our curiosity, not judgment, applies to all humans:
“When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever.
And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it.
You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”
Less judgment, more curiosity.
-Steve
