Rediscovering Curiosity: A Journey Toward Self-Exploration and Collective Evolution

Watch the live writing of the first draft of this Newsletter Post on YouTube!

The Decline of Curiosity in Adulthood

I sometimes fear that curiosity is something we lose in adulthood. As kids, we are expected to be curious. We are encouraged to experience different sensations and emotions, and learn how to function properly in the world by doing so. We wonder what will happen if we crush a bug, if we say a bad word under our breath, if we touch something hot. It’s almost as if, everyone's a little bit of a 3/5 Profile during the first few years of life.

So, at what point do we lose that ability to be curious? I think it starts somewhere around puberty. At that point in our lives, we’ve done all the experimenting we thought we needed to do to figure out the world, and then we become more concerned with figuring out how to fit into the world. If we experiment with staying out late instead of studying for a test, we aren’t rewarded for our experimentation like we were as kids. We face consequences that probably turn us off from experimenting. Our perspective transitions from curiosity to survival. Obviously, I don’t mean survival in terms of the struggles of a caveman to find food lest they die, but I do mean it in Mean Girls terms.

We become so focused on fitting in that we lose our sense of curiosity about the world. It isn’t until later in life when we hate our jobs, are going through a quarter-life crisis, have an awakening that society is here to f*ck us, or go through a break up or food poisoning that shakes us to our very core, that we begin to reawaken, and eventually, hopefully, go on our own journey to rediscover the concept of curiosity. It’s sad that it sometimes takes us being shaken to our very core to be able to rekindle our curiosity again. 

As a society, how can we teach people to keep staying curious before they lose the ability to do so?

From then on, we go through the motions of trying to live in a society that is centered around profit, where the only time allotted to be curious is after 5PM and on weekends. A lot of us don’t have the energy to be curious inside of those windows. Instead, we might escape through TV or TikTok. Sure, we might get curious on a weekend and go hiking, try a new trail, or a new place for brunch, but is a new latte flavor the right thing to be curious about?

What about the feeling you get on Sunday nights? Shouldn’t you be curious about that?

I’m guilty of losing this sense of curiosity, and obviously I am assuming that other people have as well. I can’t speak for everyone. There are a lot of people who are still curious, especially scientists, astronomers, and leaders in spaces like technology that are built around asking questions to further society. But what about the rest of us?

Reawakening Curiosity

Glimpses of the start of my journey back to curiosity are all over STARRYUU, and even here in this newsletter. I’ve shared the story many times and I will continue to do so, but the gist is that I left behind my 401K to print zines.

I reached a point in my career where I felt dead inside. I was no longer curious, about anything except what life would be like if I quit my job with nothing lined up. I didn’t “work on myself.” I didn’t explore my true authenticity, how my energy impacted others, where my intuition was actually leading me. I was lucky enough to have these Manifestor urges that naturally led me in the right direction after I reached a point of burn out. But what exactly was wrong? I didn’t know. I just knew I couldn’t have more of the same.

@jackieslabnotes

What is it actually like to BE a manifestor? To hold incredible power? To be angry? To need a lot of rest under capitalism? #humandesignsy... See more

As you’ve heard me mention, being a 3/5 profile inherently comes with a good level of curiosity. We are constantly experimenting, testing, and also sharing what we learn. 

Sidebar: Imagine toddlers today communicating with other toddlers after trying solid food for the first time, “Have you ever tried an Oreo cookie? 10/10 recommend!” 

We have to be curious to be experimenters. I think part of our mission on earth is to help other people stay curious, too. 

Looking back on the moment I discovered Human Design, it really was the moment I discovered that I had lost my curiosity, and that I wanted to be curious again. Although, I have not been able to explain that until this very moment when I’m getting curious about curiosity for the purposes of this newsletter. What I learned then was: that I really enjoyed learning and experimenting, and that I could give myself my own permission to do so. I could dedicate my life to learning and experimenting, all with a slight change in perspective.

@jackieslabnotes

Narration taken from my latest YouTube video, where I recorded the writing of my newsletter about “Knowledge” as a company Core Value. Hea... See more

Embracing Curiosity with STARRYUU

Now, the things that I’m most curious about, the perspective I’m currently in, is anything to do with self-exploration. It’s one reason why I started out on this journey of creating STARRYUU—as a way to to be able to dedicate my time to staying curious. 

This is a huge experiment: Can you follow a desire path and end up supporting yourself under capitalism?

As you may have gathered from looking around STARRYUU, this whole thing is not just about me. This is by design. As you’ll learn in a later post where I experiment with the Blue Ocean strategy, I have thoughts on gurus, and I prefer community as an alternative. My hope is that STARRYUU inspires you to become, re-become, and/or stay curious, too. Since individuating and discovering your true authentic self are lifelong processes, the act of studying and staying curious about yourself and how you show up in the world is a way to stay curious forever. It’s a way to never lose that part of ourselves that was once so important in childhood, and should stay important until the very end. 

Me trying acid for the first time on my death bed because I was curious but could never commit:

I know you know this, but we never stop evolving, and as I’ve mentioned in other posts, we need to keep evolving in order to evolve collectively. 

So STARRYUU is space for experimentation, for wondering, and for learning. You can study Human Design (just one of our modalities) for your entire life and still not know everything about it. Even dissecting that one modality, it’s like, “Okay, what is the difference between the conscious and the unconscious? If a certain gate is activating my unconscious moon, how is it different from the one that is activating my conscious moon?” From this question alone, you can stay curious every day, even multiple times per day. You could ask yourself: “How is this activation showing up for me today?” Perhaps it shows up differently throughout the day hour by hour. 

There is no reason for us not to be asking questions, getting curious about ourselves and others, at every stage of our lives. And, what happens when we stay curious in a community space, where many people are being curious at the same time, about similar topics? What can we learn from other people’s curiosity? What if we are curious what it’s like to be a 3/5 Projector when we are a 3/5 Manifestor? 

It never has to end! 

As I’ve done for all of my previous Core Values posts, let’s look at curiosity through a standard definition.

Sidebar: I love how they phonetically spell this word: /ˌkyo͝orēˈäsədē/

/ˌkyo͝orēˈäsədē/

It looks like a SIMS cheat code.

Now back to the post, okay!

A strong desire to know or learn something. Ugh, this is iNcRediBLe!

Don’t you have a strong desire to know who you really are? (Why not?!) Don’t you have a strong desire to LEARN how you can be that true version of yourself, and not someone else’s version of you? Aren’t you curious about learning about yourself instead of someone telling you who you are?

Since we’re so impacted by society, religion, other people’s energy, politics, the news, social media, how are we supposed to be able to remain curious if all the answers are already given to us?

Curiosity as a Core Value

STARRYUU offers so many ways to play with this. When we were curious as kids, didn’t we play to learn? Why should it be different now?

Individuation is hard work, but there is also a lot of fun to be had, especially when you’re in an experiment with a bunch of other people. It’s a huge risk, all of this, as I’ve mentioned before. I don’t know if everyone is as curious as I am, so I don’t really know if STARRYUU will actually work. BUT, that's why I allow people to stay curious in whatever way works for them, not just the way that works for me. 

How?

1—STARRYUU is a social first space: We live on a platform called Circle where anyone can create a social community for anything, with bonus features that places like Slack and Discord do not offer

2—I will be replacing original definitions of terminology with those written by our users.

3—STARRYUU will offer learning in multiple formats including 1:1 session, group workshops, and self-paced courses, and the option to go rogue and bounce through the channels to learn about what you want when you want. Our content also lives across multiple mediums including text, video, and audio.

I honestly didn’t even realize until writing this post that I have been building something so rooted in curiosity. Of course, I chose the word from the list of James Clear’s Core Values for some reason, but that reason ended up just being the tip of an iceberg. 

I am proud of this. At the time of writing this newsletter, I still only have about 20 members inside of STARRYUU and 90% are my friends or friends of my friends. I am still figuring out ways to pique people’s curiosity about Individuation and STARRYUU. I have many challenges including: budget, educational barriers, etc. As a creator of a company, though, I need to back up the curiosity I have about whether or not this will all work, with engagement, and then sales. Since one of our core values is authenticity, I don’t feel weird saying that aloud. 

Sidebar: I have a unique challenge where I need to strike a balance between what knowledge I democratize, which is very important to the core of STARRYUU, and which knowledge I can sell. Right now it’s feeling like: Sell my personal knowledge and democratize what’s already all over the internet. But, what is my personal knowledge? Stay tuned to a future newsletter post to find out ;) but also, read my existing newsletter posts and you’ll uncover a sh*t ton of it.

How do you authentically democratize knowledge, keep people curious, allow them to play with their curiosity, and generate revenue? The answer is still unknown, and I’m excited for you to find out along with me—hopefully, lol. One thing I need to reiterate is that all the work completed on STARRYUU so far has been inspired by a personal urge to do so. This is the Manifestor creative urge I’ve spoken a lot about, but I think it also stems from Gate 11 in Human Design, the Gate of Ideas, which is activated by three different planetary placements in my chart. 

STARRYUU is such a meta experiment, because it’s both a place where I can personally experiment with all of my urges under one umbrella which is a big umbrella of topics that I am forever curious about. At the same time, this space is a place for others to stay curious. Without originally knowing that all of this was something I wanted to achieve, somehow I am achieving it. All of the micro experiments, including  “Okay, I feel like making an ASMR-style video of me writing my company newsletter,” and “Okay, I feel like making a Notion table where people can experiment with their activated Human Design gates,” etc etc forever are all bricks being added to make the building where people can actually experiment with their own experiments as well…

Whoa.

It’s so parallel to this definition of Individuation written by Dr. Nathan Brandon, which I read on my forthcoming first official podcast episode series exploring Individuation.

It’s like all those bricks came from all over the place and magnetized themselves to me in a way that I could not ignore.

So, how will Curiosity exist as a glittery thread that runs through my entire company, including all of our decisions, all of our launches, all of our creations? Everything about STARRYUU starts from a place of my own personal curiosity, and each element of it extends out asking others to be curious about something as well. It's a fkn and endless web of wonder. 

Professionally, I think some good questions I can keep in mind to consider Curiosity along my biz dev, are:

• Will this allow others to stay curious?

• Will this feed someone’s desire to learn something?

• Are you, team STARRYUU, curious about this yourselves?

• How can this fuel collective curiosity, both inside and outside of STARRYUU?

• Is there something we or anyone can learn from this?

You might know that this is my fourth Core Values post and STARRYUU only has four Core Values, so I think now is a good time to review them all together:

AUTHENTICITY

KNOWLEDGE

CONTRIBUTION

CURIOSITY

If I had to put “all of these parts into a well functioning whole” I would say:

Curiosity can be fueled by knowledge contributed authentically by anyone.

This is actually kind of fun. It reminds me of my days as an advertising copywriter, where we had a few branded keywords to work with and had to write a tagline to sell a product using all of them:

When you contribute knowledge inside of STARRYUU, it must be from a place of authenticity in order to fuel curiosity about the right things to help us evolve as a society.

When authentic contributions are made, curiosity can be fueled by collective knowledge. 

STARRYUU must exist with authenticity, because self-exploration is such a personal journey that is unique to each person. We have a responsibility to democratize certain knowledge and invite collective contribution so that people’s curiosity doesn't dim due to factors like “nothing to relate to”, “not enough information,” or “no way to explore on my own.”

STARRYUU is a space for experimentation. Here, there are no gurus, and everyone is invited to stay curious, contribute, and share knowledge in a way that is truly authentic to them.

STARRYUU is a space where people can rekindle their curiosity through a self-exploration lens, contributing and absorbing knowledge as they gather clues to their true authenticity.

— The Human Behind STARRYUU - Jackie

STARRYUU is a space for experimenting with individuation. We democratize information around various self-exploration modalities via our virtual community space and accessible tools and resources—including your birth chart! We hope that this tool may be a helpful resource along your individuation process.

Thumbnail Image Credit: Tamara Velázquez