Episode 5: Treasure Hunt

The 3rd C - Curiosity

There are all kinds of treasure hunts:

One type of treasure hunt involves searching for and finding a treasure. When my boys were young, about reading age in elementary school, I began hiding one of their Christmas gifts each year, and sending them on a treasure hunt to find it. It started small, just a couple of obvious clues written in riddle form. They seemed to enjoy it! It evolved through the years with more difficult riddles. This past Christmas my youngest son, now 24, decided he wanted to send the rest of us on a treasure hunt for our gifts from him. He made it his own, giving us written clues and hints through miniature introductory gifts. It was a lot of fun.

I wasn’t feeling as “riddle creative” this last year, so I changed up my treasure hunt by taking pictures of their gifts in hidden locations, then made puzzles out of them. So they had to put their puzzle together first to see the picture of where their present was stashed.

Another treasure hunt involves problem solving. For his Spring Break, my oldest son, now 26, went with some friends to experience an “escape room”. He said there were a lot of clues to interpret, but not all of them were relevant to help them escape, they were distractor clues. Overall, he said he enjoyed it. I’ve always wanted to try one of those places because I love puzzle and problem solving.

Treasure hunts are all about being curious and connecting the dots by looking for relevant clues, because at the end of the “hunt” is some type of treasure, like a Christmas gift or the satisfaction of escaping an escape room. Treasure hunts are fueled by curiosity.

Often, when we think of curiosity, it is usually about topics outside of ourselves, like movie trivia or philosophy, nature or medicine. What is NOT considered typical curiosity is being curious about ourselves, our internal “world”, our own psychology. Amazingly, our internal world is one of the most fascinating, complex, and healing treasure hunts we can possibly participate in.

For the first two Cs, I introduced the truths of Catching our self-judging shame and having Compassion for our humanity as necessary in the emotional healing process. They are also necessary to allow us to be curious about our internal world. Because if we’re still “sliming” ourselves, we’re essentially blinding ourselves to the truth about ourselves, and curiosity won’t even feel like an option.

The official term for being curious about ourselves is “introspection”. Once you’ve Caught your automatic responses, like shame and self-judgment and then allow Compassion for your humanity, your first curiosity in the introspection “treasure hunt” will be to look at what the shame trigger was about. You’ll also find valuable clues if you can capture when the shame or automatic response occurred, so look for associated events or familiar triggers. Use the “interrogative questions” you learned in elementary school to help you be curious:

1 - What triggered my shame?

2 - When was my shame triggered (time of day, day of the week, week of the month, month of the year, season of the year)?

3 - How old did I feel during the shame episode?

4 - Who was I reminded of during the shame trigger if it was by someone who doesn't normally trigger me?

5 - Where was I when I was triggered, and was it familiar in any way?

6 - Why was it so triggering?

Most of our triggers stem from childhood events that felt overwhelming at the time, mainly because we didn’t have the adult tools to cope. So this treasure hunt my take you to your childhood at times. And one of the best clues will be how old you feel at the time of the trigger. Let your imagination and memory guide you to the original source of the trigger.

Curiosity will help you move to the next C, Challenge your Belief Systems. Ultimately Curiosity leads us to the belief system we adopted as kids that still drives our shame as adults. Once we find the original belief system, we can ask the question, “Is it true for today?” Curiosity is about connecting the dots! And that’s the treasure, because if we discover the source, we can change the course.

In my next blog, we’ll explore the 4th C, Challenging our Belief Systems.