In Uncertain Times, Get Curious

Questions flow from curiosity. If we want to live and love the questions of our lives—How to live a life of purpose? Who am I in the aftermath of a big change or transition? What kind of person do I want to become as I grow older?—we must first ask them into conscious existence.

Many people have written entire books defining and redefining curiosity. But for me, the most helpful definition comes from a philosophy professor, Perry Zurn, and a systems neuroscientist, Dani Bassett: “For too long—and still too often—curiosity has been oversimplified,” they write, typically “reduced to the simple act of raising a hand or voicing a question, especially from behind a desk or a podium. . . . Scholars generally boil it down to ‘information-seeking’ behavior or a ‘desire to know.’ But curiosity is more than a feeling and certainly more than an act. And curiosity is always more than a single move or a single question.”

Curiosity works, they write, by “linking ideas, facts, perceptions, sensations and data points together.” It is complex, mutating, unpredictable, and transformational. It is, fundamentally, an act of connection, an act of creating relationships between ideas and people. Asking questions then, becoming curious, is not just about wanting to find the answer—it is also about our need to connect, with ourselves, with others, with the world.

And this, perhaps, is why our deeper questions are hardly ever satisfied by Google or by fast, easy answers from the people I refer to as the Charlatans of Certainty—the gurus, influencers, and “experts” peddling simple solutions to all the complex problems you face. This is also the reason there is no one-size-fits-all formula for cultivating curiosity—particularly the kind that allows us to live and love our questions, especially the questions that are hard to love, like “How can I live with chronic pain?” or “How do I extricate myself from a challenging relationship?” This kind of curiosity is a special flavor.

Asking questions is not just about wanting to find the answer—it is also about our need to connect, with ourselves, with others, with the world.

It’s easy to get curious about queries separate from ourselves (“Why do only some leaves turn colors in the fall?”) or even about exciting unknowns in our lives (“What’s the surprise my family is planning for my birthday?”). It’s harder to access a sense of curiosity about the parts of our lives that are scary or painful. In the moment, it feels easier to distract ourselves from that pain. Or we may let it hijack us: Our fears and anxieties take the wheel, driving us to places we’d rather not be.

In other words, curiosity can disappear just when we need it most.

In fact, some research suggests questions can serve as an antidote to the anxiety that can arise in times of great uncertainty.

One study, conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Pennsylvania State University, analyzed surveys from 6,750 adults that were done approximately once a year for 10 years to investigate whether there was a connection between something called “need for cognition” and their symptoms of anxiety and depression.

The “need for cognition” scale measures how much someone is drawn to the act of thinking—whether they relish deep thought or seek to avoid it at all costs. Though need for cognition is not the same as curiosity, there are some associations: Generally speaking, the lower your need for cognition score, the less curious you are likely to be, and the less tolerance you have for uncertainty and ambiguity. After analyzing survey results across 10 years, the researchers found that, indeed, higher need for cognition scores were associated with fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression.

One takeaway from the research is that the more you can anchor yourself in questions, letting them fuel your curiosity and deepen your understanding of who you are and what you want, the less anxious you’ll be.

When people feel anxious or depressed, they’re often wedded to a particular thought or an idea of how they think the future will turn out. This means they’re closing themselves off to opportunities, explains Nur Hani Zainal, previously a postdoctoral research associate at Harvard Medical School and a coauthor of the research. “Asking questions opens up different possibilities. If someone can be curious, they are less likely to narrow in on one idea that could be generating that feeling of stuckness, or apprehension about the future.”

How, I wondered, could I start to approach uncertainty with curiosity? What would it mean to cultivate a unique kind of curiosity—one that’s accessible even in the most challenging moments?

The more you can anchor yourself in questions, letting them fuel your curiosity and deepen your understanding of who you are and what you want, the less anxious you’ll be.

Once I started digging, I found all sorts of tools and ideas—ranging from simple (personal prompts) to more complex (psychedelic therapy).

One of the simpler practices that can help is called “temporal distancing,” which is a fancy way of saying mental time travel. The idea is that by imagining how a past or future version of ourselves would handle a particular challenge, we can gain more perspective on our big questions today.

For instance, imagine you’re uncertain about your career after a layoff or decision to pivot to a new industry. What’s been helpful to me has been imagining two conversations. One with my younger self as she was heading into another difficult and uncertain time. What guidance would my present self share with her? And then, a conversation with my sage, future self. How would she guide me in this moment?

Embedded in these conversations are two questions that you can ask yourself to help you get unstuck from painful uncertainty: Who do I want to become a year from now, and what choices could I make now to put me on that path? And, if I could talk to myself five years ago, what would I say to prepare that self for what’s to come?

Asking questions like these can get our curiosity, and thereby ourselves, moving in the direction we want to go.

Excerpted from How to Fall in Love with Questions. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins. Copyright © 2025 by Elizabeth Weingarten.