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Finding the Unfamiliar in the Seemingly Familiar
01/27/2022
Finding the Unfamiliar in the Seemingly Familiar
Todd Kashdan is the Founder of Kashdan Consulting, where he provides consulting services to organizations looking to improve their well-being. He offers keynotes, workshops, program development, and program evaluation. Todd is among the world’s top experts on the psychology of well-being, psychological strengths, mental agility, and social relationships. His research has been featured in hundreds of media outlets, including multiple articles in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, and Forbes. He is also a Professor of Psychology at George Mason University, where he founded the Well-Being Lab. He has published over 210 peer-reviewed journal articles on well-being and resilience, psychological flexibility, meaning and purpose in life, curiosity, and social anxiety management. In this episode… We often take pride in how well we know our relationship partners. But what we often don’t realize is the collective knowledge and shared experiences we have. That knowledge decreases our propensity to be curious because things become less and less novel the more we know our partner. Curiosity is the oxygen of relationships. To be in a successful, long-term relationship, you must be intent on finding the unfamiliar in the seemingly familiar. Curiosity differentiates a stale, failing, assumption-based relationship from a finer-grained and thriving one. In a thriving relationship, you’re always looking for the ever-so-slight distinctions of how your partner is changing over time. You notice how they respond differently to similar events or situations. When you are curious and seek out novel information and experiences, vitality and energy towards the relationship increase, and you are more engaged. On this episode of the Our.Love Podcast, Jim Coan sits down with Todd Kashdan, a Professor of Psychology at George Mason University, to discuss the importance of curiosity in relationships. Todd talks about what curiosity means, understanding curiosity as an ability and a learned skill, the difference curiosity makes in relationships, and what happens when a relationship is devoid of curiosity.
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