“By being curious, we learn and grow.”

Fun fact: Did you know sharks have an amazing sense of smell? They can smell a drop of blood, 0.25 miles away. And they can differentiate between human blood and fish blood. 

7 years ago, I heard of a woman named Ocean who was offering to take anyone interested, out into the ocean and swim with the sharks. With no cage, might I add. I was super fascinated by that so I wanted to go check it out. I didn’t want to go by myself, so I asked all my friends, and even my coworkers if anyone would want to join me. No one did. In fact, I had one co-worker give me a hug in response. I was like, “oh thanks, what’s that for?” She responds, “Cause it was nice knowing you,” and walked away. 

Well, I finally found someone to go with me.

As soon as we got there, we had to sign our life away, acknowledging that IF something were to happen, Ocean and her crew wouldn’t be held liable.

We hop on the boat, and her crew take us into the middle of the ocean, right where all the sharks hung out. 

When we got there, we literally could see sharks swarming around the boat. 

I’ve never seen that many sharks before, let alone ONE. And my only reference of sharks was from the movie, Jaws. So, you can probably imagine how I was feeling at that moment.

Anyway, Ocean puts on all her gear, and jumps in the ocean first to assess the environment before going in. Then she pops back up, and tells us we can jump in. She tells us, there’s about 30+ sharks in the water and everything is in perfect condition.

So all 4 of us jump in. And it was terrifyingly thrilling. 

So there we were, making sure we were close to the boat, just watching the sharks swim all around and underneath us. 

We were in the water for a good while until all of a sudden, one of Ocean’s crew member who was on the boat, started yelling something. From under the water, you can’t really hear anything. It just all sounds like muffled talking. 

So I popped my head up to hear what he was trying to tell us.

I know, at this moment, you’re probably thinking, “What the hell did you just get yourself into?”

But that’s the thing with fear.

Why do we get scared? We get scared because it’s unknown. 

We are biologically wired to scan the environment for something wrong. 

“Is there a potential threat?” “How cautious do I need to be?” 

This would be useful if the fear is a circumstance that can harm us, but today the biggest fears we face are fictional fears that pose no real threat. And what’s worse is that we create them entirely with our own thoughts. 

  • Not in control

  • Insecurity

  • Anxiety

  • Embarrassment

  • Overwhelm

  • Stress

  • Inadequacy

These are all types of fears. And I’m definitely guilty of all of these. 

The problem is your brain reacts the same way to those fictional fears as it does to actual fears by putting your body in a constant fear response. We often live in a triggered state of fight or flight and THIS does not allow us to progress, grow and face our future, head-on with confidence. 

You see, Curiosity has an excitement, an expansiveness and hopeful quality wrapped in it. 

In fact, did you know that the body experiences the physical sensation of fear and excitement the same way? The only difference is how our brain tells us how to process this emotion. 

How do we combat this?

If we tell our brain that we are curious and excited about something rather than fearful, your brain will approach it in a much different and positive way. 

Imagine IF you could just tell yourself to be curious about ANYTHING you are afraid of or are worried about. 

Well guess what, YOU CAN.

So back to my shark story.

The crew member on the boat was yelling for us to “drop everything and to swim away from the boat!” and pointed to a specific direction and said to “go follow Ocean!” 

I had no idea what was going on. But we just faithfully swam behind her. As we’re swimming, I slowly realized what we were doing. All the while, I thought we were swimming away from something, but we were actually swimming towards something. We were swimming towards something beauuutttiiffull. 

There were 3 humpback whales right in front of us. Two adult humpack whales and one little baby humpback whale. 

(show video) 

Can you hear them talking?

Yes, all 30+ sharks were still swimming right underneath us.

The parts that I didn’t add here was that before we got into the water, Ocean educated us on all things shark related. 

She told us how to act in the water. Like, don’t flail your hand and arms out like this because you’ll look like a squid. Or don’t splash too much with your fins on the surface of the water, because then you’ll look like a bird. 

Both squid and birds are part of the sharks diet and doing those actions make you look like food.  

Basically, just don’t act like food.

She also told us that just like any animal, sharks are curious creatures and like to investigate if they see something new. But also, just like any animal (and humans) they are scared of something they can’t identify. So therefore you need to always be looking around and can’t be focused on one shark. 

She also told us how uninterested they are to eat us. Actually, remember the fun fact I added in the beginning? There was a girl with us that had her period that day too. The sharks were definitely NOT interested in her.

My point is, I was less afraid because I was educated. 

End with this:

Beautiful hack: If you choose to put yourself in the mindset of curiosity, you are unable to feel the emotion of fear because it is biologically impossible to experience fear and curiosity at the same time. 

So imagine, what could be possible if you chose curiosity over fear.