Quiet No More

The Power of Asking Questions for Personal Growth

• Carmen Cauthen

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What if unlocking your full potential was just a matter of embracing curiosity and continuous learning? Join me, Carmen Cauthen, as I navigate the often unseen terrains of personal growth, sharing my experiences as a self-proclaimed "guinea pig" in life's grand experiment. From the unexpected joy of rediscovering a forgotten cashier's check to the complexities of being a trustee, I reveal how each challenge is an opportunity to learn and grow. As a recovering hoarder, I explain how letting go can teach profound lessons about managing not only physical spaces but also financial ones.

With stories that underscore the significance of staying intellectually active, I invite you to unleash your curiosity and embark on a journey of lifelong learning. Together, we explore why it’s crucial to dig deeper, ask questions, and fully understand the world around us. Drawing on personal anecdotes, such as the joy of discovering new words, I highlight how this curiosity keeps our minds sharp and prevents stagnation. 

By staying open to the unknown and welcoming challenges, we can ensure personal growth and avoid the pitfalls of complacency. Join the conversation and rethink what it means to truly live and learn every day.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Speaker 1:

Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long. I'm Carmen Coffin and this is Quiet. No More have you ever been a guinea pig. I mean not a real critter guinea pig, but a guinea pig Like somebody tested something out on you or tried something out with you. I am crazy because I kind of like being a guinea pig. I like that I go to the store or I go in the bank and I need something that somebody either doesn't know about or they don't know how to do it and they have to go get some help. I don't mind being a training session, because I am a lifelong learner. I am going to learn until the day that God calls me home, and I think everybody needs to learn something new every day. So sometimes I remember when mom and daddy had a trust mama was gone and I was.

Speaker 1:

I had taken over as a trustee, and if I would go to a different branch of the bank then that they normally went to, then somebody would have to figure out how to handle me doing something I so I have to tell you another whole story now because I am a recovering hoarder. I have figured out why I have been hoarding, so I have been able to get rid of things and not hold on to them. It was a control thing for me. It was one of the few things that I could control. But while I was going through papers, I found an envelope brand new envelope and I just I got ready to put it in the trash and something said open that envelope. And I opened it and it was a check from 2019, a cashier's check, and I remembered, when I saw the company that it was made out to, that I had had to go and pay them a different way. I didn't know that this check had ended up in a bunch of other papers, and so I went to the bank today and it wasn't just they didn't know what to do with the trust piece. It was that it was 2019. It was an old check and daddy died in 2020. But you know, when you get a cashier's check at the bank, they move the money out of your regular account and put it in a different account so they could see. After they did a little digging, after the teller said let me get my manager because I don't know what to do with this, he learned and she learned that actually the money was still there. They were thinking it had gone into the SGT's fund of the state, but now I have some other things I have to do and so I've learned something new.

Speaker 1:

But I am happy when people get the opportunity to learn something while I'm there with them. It means to me that they are, they're growing some more. Because, you know, one of my pet peeves is people who don't want to learn anything. You know, we can all learn something new every day and I pride myself on being able to learn something new every day and reading something new every day, because I don't want to be dumb, I don't want to be ignorant. I mean, I know there are things that I'm not going to ever learn. Like, I'm not going to be the surgeon who goes in the operating room and operates on you. I don't want to do that. So I don't want to learn those things.

Speaker 1:

But I want more than basic knowledge. Like, if I go to the doctor and they tell me something, I'm going to go home and research for myself If something's not working right with my medicine. I and the pharmacist is not my daddy and he can't. You know the pharmacist is not my daddy and he can't. You know he was going to research it. So I learned to research. I learned to look things up. In fact he didn't. We couldn't even go ask somebody how to spell something at our house. We got sent to the dictionary or the encyclopedia and they wouldn't even tell us how to spell it when we were going to look it up. It was like sound it out and go look it up and see what it means. So that may be where I got this drive to learn all the time from.

Speaker 1:

But if you're not learning, what are you doing? So I don't mind being the guinea pig Now. It doesn't mean I don't get frustrated because of the time that it takes, but you know that's what we all had to do from the time we were children. We had to learn how to do things, and it took time. It takes time to learn how to walk and not fall down. It takes time to learn how to run and not fall down. It takes time to learn how to run and not fall down. It takes time to learn how to talk, and it's not something you can pick up from a cell phone. You have to do it in practice and you have to do it consistently, and so those are skills I don't ever want to lose.

Speaker 1:

So anybody who knows me knows I am going to look for something and I am going to wait patiently. Now I might be tapping my nails on the table, but I want to know all the pieces. Don't just give me the part you think I can handle, because I'm going to be able to handle it all in my own time, but I want to know. Do you want to know? Do you want to learn something new? Because, see, I really think that if you aren't willing to learn something new, then you're just lazy. You're lazy, you don't want to stretch your mind, and sometimes it might be a fear, a fear of the knowledge or a fear of somebody saying something about you.

Speaker 1:

If you know more than they do, well, that's on them. You know if I'm smart, I'm going to always be smart. You know if I'm smart, I'm going to always be smart, and I guess I was told that enough that I believe it. But I want to know the little deep down things and I'm going to go dig it out and I think you ought to do the same thing because it's important. No-transcript, would you just say well, I don't know, I'm the person who says I don't know, but let me see if I can help you figure it out, or let me see if I can find the answer for you. I'm going to try to lead somebody in whatever direction they need to go so they'll get their answer. But I'm probably not going to just tell them all the answer. But even if they're gone and they figure you know the answer. But even if they're gone and they figure you know they've gone on somewhere else.

Speaker 1:

Once my curiosity has been aroused, I got to go dig it up for myself and I'm going to stick it in there in my head somewhere and, like some days now, I'll say a word and I'll think hmm, I think I learned that one in sixth grade and hadn't used it since then, but I'll go back and find it. In fact, the other day, while I was reading, I was reading an article and there was this word that I'd never heard of in an article. I had to go get the dictionary and figure out what that word meant so I could read the rest of the sentence. But part of that is being a guinea pig to learning, and so I just think we have so much to learn about and if we don't challenge ourselves and the children and the young people around us to learn, then they get as my mama used to say it, they get rusty. Their brains don't work as well.

Speaker 1:

It's a machine. It needs to work. In order to work, you have to work it. So when you have questions or when somebody doesn't quite know how to do something that you come up to them with, don't just walk off. Don't take your marbles and go home. Stick it out, figure out what it is that you need to know, or figure out how to be still while somebody else is figuring it out, and don't get angry or upset, because we all have to learn new things all the time, because we don't want to be lazy, and I'm probably not going to be quiet about that anymore either. You've been listening to quiet no more, where I share my journey, so you can be quiet.