'Today I Learned': 30 Intriguing Things People Didn't Learn At School, But Found On The Net (New Pics)

Lenore was very upfront about what we have to do to get our lives in order and bring a bit of fire back into our lives: "So before you can become curious again, you have to do the hard part: Get off the couch! Force yourself out the door. Why? Because beyond your four walls, things are never exactly the same. Weather, animals, people, sounds, smells, clouds—they’re all swirling about."

She continued: "Ask yourself to start noticing new things. I did that this morning with a friend. We took a walk around our neighborhood and started looking for interesting details in the homes and buildings we passed. It went from a walk down streets we’d seen a million times to a sort of treasure hunt. And the big thing we were really hunting for? Curiosity! When you’re curious you’re alive again—noticing, thinking, making connections. You can’t do that if there’s no new information coming in. So your first step is to force yourself out of a rut by leaving the house (harder during the pandemic, but not impossible)."

Aiming for new goals and sparking a desire to learn new things also requires leaving our entrenched routines behind and trying something new. Lenore pointed out that we all have the power to learn new skills and pick up new hobbies during the endless lockdowns. "Think of something you’d like to be able to say you’ve been working on, especially once life returns to normal: 'Well, I wasted a lot of that free time I had, but at least I started...' Or, 'At least I learned…' For my sister, she’s taking ballet online. For my husband, he’s learning film editing. For me it’s… oh God! I better come up with something fast! Um…let’s say I will learn how to create a Clubhouse program. Ok? (You can check in with me in a few weeks.)"

So start off by going outside "if only to get your blood flowing," then "think of someone whose skill at something you envy," and "take the first small step toward that skill." According to Lenore, even a tiny step is enough because you break the ice of the inertia. "Do not worry if you are taking that first step as simply something you’re doing thanks to social pressure, or for someone other than yourself. Change is change—the motivation doesn’t matter."

However, the internet is a double-edged sword and it can sometimes be easy to get lost between what's fact and what's fiction. You have to be very wary of fake news as you surf the net. Lenore shared some of her insights about this, too.

"When you’re reading an article that seems to be so shocking that you’re amazed this is the first time you’re hearing about it, take a short phrase from the piece and Google it. I did this yesterday—I was reading about a girl not allowed to take her anti-epilepsy drug at school because it contained CBD, even though she had a prescription! Turns out the article, dated March 2021, was actually a story re-published in its entirety from three years ago. That’s why no one else was talking about it—it was literally not news. So if something strikes you as fishy, go fishing," she said.

"As for whether or not your fishing will lead you to disinformation rather than the truth, try not to fish blindly. If you’re curious about crime stats, for instance, look these up on a government website, not some random blog," Lenore explained, adding that if you find something very hard to believe, look up the story on Snopes that tracks down whether or not popular, shocking stories are true or made up. 

"The nonprofit I run, Let Grow, has its own myth-busting page, investigating fears and rumors about children’s safety," Lenore pointed out. "So that’s a source you can trust, too! Stay curious. Stay skeptical without being cynical. And if something sounds too good—or too terrible—to be true, check it out!"

However, embarrassment has its positive quirks. So the next time you’re blushing because you found out you weren’t aware of some fact about the world, you can remember this and feel better. “One thing that’s interesting about embarrassment is that, for as much as we might experience it as painful in the moment, it’s actually very socially adaptive. Being embarrassed signals to other people that you care about what they think. And that actually draws people in to you,” Vanessa, from Cornell University, said.

“So blushing, burying your head in your hands, laughing, acknowledging how embarrassing something was, are all totally healthy ways to react,” Bohns said that we should embrace embarrassment instead of shying away like a lot of us instinctively want to do.

However, there’s a flip side to this. There’s an unhealthy way to react to embarrassment, too. “The unhealthy way to react is to pretend you’re not embarrassed, that you didn’t make a mistake, or to get angry. Those things undo the positive effect that embarrassment typically has on other people by conveying insincerity and pushing people away rather than drawing them in.”