NLP Weekly: Comfort Is the Enemy of Curiosity

One of the book's I read this week was A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century. Evolutionary biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein explore how our ancient instincts are mismatched with modern life. The book offers a compelling call to reconnect with the behaviours, mindsets, and environments we were designed for—curiosity, adaptation, deep learning, and connection to nature. In a world moving faster than ever, this book is a blueprint for slowing down, observing more, and thinking better.

Performance: Curiosity as Your Competitive Edge

Many of the struggles we face today come from living in environments our minds and bodies weren’t evolved for. Rather than viewing this as a crisis, it presents an opportunity—one that demands curiosity and adaptation.

Performance today isn’t just about speed or strength—it’s about how quickly you can learn, unlearn, re-learn and act.

The modern world changes faster than our biology. High performers stay curious not out of luxury, but necessity. You cannot cling to what once worked—stay hungry for what works now. Seek what will work in the future.

When faced with statements like "stay in your lane" or "that's not how we do that here", seek the answer to "What would need to be true for us to take a new approach?"

The most valuable skill in any field today? The ability to stay curious, ask better questions, and never assume you have it all figured out.

This week, ask yourself:

• Am I refining what I know, or repeating what’s familiar?
• Am I curious enough to challenge my assumptions?

Leadership: Learning Beyond the Playbook

Our ancestral behaviours—like storytelling, close-knit communities, and pattern recognition—shaped our survival. And while the corporate world isn’t a savannah, the principle remains: leaders who thrive are those who adapt by learning deeply, widely, and often unexpectedly.

Most leadership advice today is optimized for efficiency, not wisdom. For management, not meaning. Leadership isn’t just a set of tactics, inputs, or outputs—it’s a way of thinking. That thinking evolves through curiosity.

The best leaders don’t just seek answers—they seek better questions. They read outside their discipline. They explore ideas that challenge them. They don’t want to manage—they want to understand.

This week, challenge yourself to learn something well outside your lane. Something that has nothing to do with your next meeting—but everything to do with how you think.

Because great leaders aren’t built by knowing more. They’re built by being endlessly curious about what they don’t know.

Nature: The Intelligence Hidden in Instinct

Modern life has pulled us away from the very systems that shaped our evolution. We’ve built environments optimized for comfort, speed, and convenience—but in doing so, we’ve dulled our most powerful tools: awareness, observation, and instinct.

Modern life numbs that instinct. We insulate, isolate, and scroll past the very things we’re wired to learn from.

Our ancestors didn’t learn from TikTok, AI, YouTube, podcasts or even textbooks. They learned by watching shadows shift in the forest, listening to subtle changes in birdsong, tracking the migration of animals, and noting how the wind shifted before a storm. Nature was their teacher—and they were endlessly curious students.

Your ability to learn directly from the world around you is still inside you. You just have to remember how to listen.

We don’t just go into nature to escape. We go to reconnect with the part of us that’s designed to pick up patterns, observe shifts, and engage curiosity at a deep, cellular level.

Nature doesn’t explain itself. It invites you to ask better questions:

• What am I not noticing that’s right in front of me?

• What is nature doing right now that I could learn from in my work, my team, or myself?

• Where am I forcing control when I should be observing more patiently?

Leadership and performance are just extensions of pattern recognition and adaptation—skills we sharpen when we immerse ourselves in the natural world.

This weekend, take a walk with no destination. Sit without distraction. Watch what your brain does when it’s forced to see again. You’ll be amazed at how much more intelligent you become when you let the world teach you.

Nature rewards curiosity. Pay attention to subtle cues. Every rustle in the grass could be a signal. Every pattern in the trees could teach us something. The moment we stop observing, we start missing critical cues—about ourselves, others, and the systems we’re part of.

Final Thought: Curiosity Is Not a Luxury—It’s a Your Advantage

In a world built for speed, curiosity is your filter.
In a world obsessed with certainty (or maybe chaos...), curiosity is your edge.
In a world increasingly disconnected from nature, curiosity brings us back to what matters.

Stay curious. Stay human.