Not everything I wrote for my upcoming book, Beyond Anxiety, could be included in the final manuscript. Some parts had to be cut—that’s just the nature (or culture) of publishing. However, I can still share them with you here!

Fresh from the cutting-room floor, the following is about two distinct kinds of curiosity and how to ignite the one that makes you feel good. Enjoy. 

According to psychologist Jordan Litman, curiosity comes in two flavors. One is “deprivation curiosity,” a worried need to know that stems from lacking enough information to feel safe. The other, which Litman labeled “interest curiosity,” comes from a sense of wanting to know.

Interest curiosity feels good. It’s that drive to find out what’s over the next hill, or how it feels to body surf, or what will happen if you drop a pack of Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke (Google it!). This kind of curiosity is absorbing, compelling, often exciting. 

Deprivation curiosity, on the other hand, sucks. At best, it’s like an itch you can’t scratch: “I know I came into this room to get something, but what was it?” 

At worst, it creates a web of anxious wondering that’s close to unbearable: “What’s happening? Is that the fire alarm? What have I missed? What did I do wrong? Who’s mad at me? Why?”

As a child, you came preloaded with 100% interest curiosity. It’s what made you climb into the kitchen cabinets, push crayons into the heating vents, and bring home your pet worm. Having survived all that, you grew up in a culture that taught you to stop exploring for the fun of it. By adulthood, most of us are dominated by deprivation curiosity, the kind that nags, “Where will the money come from?” and “Will someone hate my Instagram post?”

Even if you’ve forgotten how interest curiosity feels, yours is still hanging out in your brain, waiting to play. Re-igniting that kind of curiosity is an incredibly powerful step toward overcoming anxiety and the other emotional ills that plague us, and moving into a calmer, more joyful life. 

It’s time you reclaimed the interest curiosity nature gave you—and this reclamation can happen in a moment.

For example, Dr. Judson Brewer, a psychiatrist who wrote the wonderful bestseller Unwinding Anxiety, uses one simple syllable—not even a whole word—to call up interest curiosity in his patients. 

Brewer and a colleague once took an anxious sports team for a hike in the Colorado mountains. They stopped at a particularly beautiful vista, and then, by a prearranged signal, both doctors said, “Hmm!” 

Immediately, all the athletes became intensely curious. Also cheerful. Even when the doctors told them they weren’t “Hmm-ing” about anything in particular—that they were just acting curious—everyone’s spirits lifted. The athletes started saying “Hmm” as a kind of mood-boosting curiosity practice from then on. 

Years before reading Dr. Brewer’s work, I stumbled into the joy of triggering people’s curiosity in a wilderness seminar of my own. Along with my colleague Michael Trotta, a brilliant outdoorsman and coach, I accompanied about a dozen clients into the red rock desert of Arizona. 

Our objective? Becoming invisible. We were learning to do this from Michael, who taught us that when a natural ecosystem is peaceful, you can hear a characteristic calm murmur—a gentle chorus of insects droning, birds chirping, wind blowing. 

But when a hunting predator appears, everything in a circle around the animal is scared silent. At the outer perimeter of this circle of silence is a ring of sound: animals right in their curiosity sweet spot, who stare at the predator and send out alarm calls. 

Our job, Michael told us, was to walk along a mountain path listening for circles of silence surrounded by rings of alarm calls. As soon as we heard the alarms, we were to melt into the underbrush and hold very still, becoming invisible to the predator as it walked past. 

We all got very excited about this exercise. We marched along in single file, listening intently, poised to disappear. Unfortunately, all of us except Michael were extraordinarily bad at the craft of sound-tracking. 

I can’t adequately describe the shock and horror we felt when we came around a bend in the path to see five or six senior citizens hiking briskly toward us, decked out in state-of-the-art mountaineering gear and wielding not one but two walking sticks apiece.

Michael had already disappeared. The rest of us just stood there, aghast, rooted to the spot, as the hikers advanced toward us. 

Then we scattered, crashing into the underbrush, leaping over obstacles, looking desperately for places to hide, still bent on disappearing. I saw flashes of color zipping in all directions as our flowered hats and running shoes reflected the desert light.

At this, the senior citizens stopped and watched us for a confused moment. Then, without conferring, they ran after us, each choosing someone different to follow. We seminar folk had the advantage of a brief head start, but let me tell you, those seniors were nimble. 

One of them, closing in on me from behind, kept shouting in a heavy German accent, “Excuse me! From what are we escaping?” I tried to ditch him by climbing a cottonwood tree, but he just followed me right up.

The incident ended with all of us—seminar participants and German hikers alike—crouching silent and motionless in the desert for about ten minutes. Then Michael tolerantly rounded up our group and got us back to the trail. 

I don’t know what the Germans made of the whole experience. But I’ll never forget the innocent joy on those heat-flushed faces as they careened after us, waving their walking sticks, their curiosity cranked up to maximum. 

What this showed me is that just acting curious leads us to things that genuinely interest us. 

Today I’d love for you to spend a little time accessing your own interest curiosity.

Here’s how:

• Pick up any object, say “Hmm!” and notice if you become curious about the object. 
• Stand in a room, say “Hmm!” and look around to see what’s interesting.
• Go to a different room and do it again. And another room. And another. 
• While outside in a public place, look intently in a random direction and say “Hmm!” See how many people will join you in exploration.
• While near other people, look fascinated and rush in any given direction. See if other people follow you.
• Find a community of curious people (like my Wilder Community!) and browse through their posts, saying “Hmm!” repeatedly until you find something that makes you really mean it.

These “interest hacks” may seem odd (getting curious by acting curious, instead of waiting for something to punch through the tedium of your grown-up life?) but they work. They’ll reignite your connection to life, to joy, to connecting with other people and the world. 

Or maybe they won’t. Either way, I’m super curious to hear how it goes.