Stop Following Prompts

How curiosity fights the fear that keeps us stuck

Several years ago I flew up to the Pacific Northwest to join my client, Mike, for a company retreat. He picked me up at the airport in a rental car, we tossed my bag in the back, and I asked the obvious question.

“Where’s the retreat?”

“I don’t know exactly,” he said, perfectly calm. “But I’ve got the address plugged into my GPS.”

At first, I laughed. Then I felt that little internal click that happens when something small reveals something big.

Because that’s how we live now, isn’t it?

We plug in a destination. We follow the voice prompts. We turn when told. We arrive. And if we don’t arrive, we assume the system is wrong. Or the roads are wrong. Or somebody gave us the wrong address.

We rarely consider the more uncomfortable possibility: we’re outsourcing our sense of direction.

Back then, it was GPS. Today it’s everything. The feed. The algorithm. The “recommended for you.” The autopilot defaults. The black box that “just works.” No user-serviceable parts inside. Don’t open this. Don’t ask. Don’t touch. Just follow the prompts.

That’s fine for getting to a hotel.

It’s a terrible way to live.

And it’s an even worse way to lead.

Curiosity is not a personality trait. It’s a stance.

When people hear “curiosity,” they picture a certain type of person — the explorer, the question-asker, the scientist, the one who pokes at things. Some of us are wired that way. But the kind of curiosity that changes cultures, businesses, relationships, and outcomes isn’t just a personality trait. It’s a choice you can make even when you don’t feel like making it.

And here’s why that matters: fear is everywhere.

Fear of failing. Fear of looking dumb. Fear of being blamed. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of change. Fear of loss. Fear of the conversation nobody wants to have.

When we stop asking why, we stop growing. And when we stop growing, we start fearing. Not always loudly. Often politely. With a smile. With “terminal niceness.” With meetings full of agreement and hallways full of resentment.

Curiosity is the antidote. Not because curiosity makes everything easy, but because curiosity keeps everything movable.

Fear wears costumes

Fear doesn’t usually announce itself. It shows up dressed as something else — caution, certainty, efficiency, tradition. Here’s how I’ve learned to spot it, and what happens when curiosity walks into the room.

The fear of looking stupid

This one kills more good ideas than bad strategy ever will.

When people are afraid to ask questions, they stop thinking out loud. When they stop thinking out loud, the organization goes quiet. Not peaceful. Quiet. There’s a difference.

A curious leader handles a performance problem differently than a fearful one. Instead of punishing or berating, curiosity asks:

What led you to choose that? What were you trying to accomplish? What got in the way?

Punishment might change behavior temporarily. Understanding changes systems.

I learned this the hard way in southern Ethiopia.

I had ridden for hours toward the Omo Valley, chasing a place I’d read about but barely understood. The road dissolved into mud. The river crossing ahead was deep, slick, and climbed steeply on the other side.

A small crowd gathered to watch.

I could feel the pressure — the white guy on the big motorcycle is supposed to make it. Supposed to be competent. Supposed to have this figured out.

Instead, I shut off the engine.

I walked the crossing. Looked at the ruts. Felt the mud in my hands.

And then I turned around.

Not because I couldn’t try.

Because I didn’t understand enough yet.

There’s a difference between courage and ego. Curiosity helps you tell them apart.

The fear of conflict

Conflict rarely starts with facts. It starts with interpretation. With assumptions. With tone. With the story we tell ourselves about what the other person intended.

Curiosity interrupts that reflex.

Years ago, riding through Panama, I crossed a double yellow line to pass an overloaded car crawling down the highway. A police officer on an old Yamaha chased me down, lights spinning.

He barely looked at my documents. He wanted money.

When he said, “We’re going to the police station,” he expected fear.

Instead, I said, “Let’s go.”

I had time. I was curious what a rural Panamanian police station might look like. What happens when you remove urgency from a shakedown? What happens when you don’t play your expected role?

Suddenly the station was “closed for three days.” He would need to hold my documents.

We both knew what that meant.

The only cash I had was one large bill. Too much to lose. Too much to offer when I knew he’d take less. And I still needed gas down the road.

So I asked him if he had change.

We stood there in the heat, two men negotiating dignity in a ditch.

Finally, he walked over to my bike, took my spare fuel bottles, and filled them from his own tank.

Fuel for cash.

He got his bribe. I got gas.

And I rode away realizing something important: conflict runs on expectation. When you interrupt the script, the energy shifts.

Curiosity doesn’t make the world honest.

But it makes you harder to intimidate.

And here’s the test: if you can’t imagine how a situation makes sense from the other person’s point of view, you still need more information.

That’s not just negotiation. That’s marriage. That’s the meeting you’re dreading on Tuesday.

Curiosity is a move you can make in that moment.

The fear of the unfamiliar

This is the costume fear wears when it crosses borders — cultural, generational, departmental.

It’s the one that builds silos. The one that makes organizations hire the same profiles, promote the same faces, and mistake familiarity for competence.

Most stubborn problems aren’t technical. They’re human. Misunderstandings. Unspoken assumptions. Competing stories about what’s “really” happening.

Curiosity allows you to ask:

Why? What’s your story? What am I missing? What do you see that I don’t?

But you have to mean it. Curiosity can be faked, and everyone can feel when it is.

The goal isn’t to interrogate.

The goal is to understand.

In the dusty border town of Moyale, between Kenya and Ethiopia, someone lifted my phone from the breast pocket of my riding jacket while I was standing in the middle of a crowd.

I turned around and felt the absence before I knew what was missing.

After three days bouncing across the desert. After blocked roads and crooked checkpoints. After mud, exhaustion, and no sleep.

Gone.

Thirty or forty people stood in a semicircle watching me.

I could have exploded. I could have accused everyone. I could have defaulted to the reflex that treats unfamiliarity as hostility.

Instead, I raised my hands and said:

“Don’t do this to me, Kenya.”

Silence.

I asked questions instead of making accusations.

“Who saw it?”

“Do you want Kenya to earn this reputation?”

A boy stepped forward. Then another.

The police were called. The crowd shifted. And twenty minutes later, two men on a motorbike returned with my phone.

If I had escalated, the crowd would have hardened.

Instead, it opened.

That’s what curiosity does with the unfamiliar. It doesn’t remove the strangeness. It changes your relationship to it.

The fear of irrelevance

This is the quiet one. The fear that what worked yesterday won’t work tomorrow. The fear that makes leaders grip tighter instead of looking wider.

Rigidity is comfort dressed up as principle.

“We’ve always done it this way.”

“That will never work.”

It’s the cultural equivalent of duct tape over the check engine light. You can run like that for a while. Eventually, something expensive breaks.

I’ve ridden through towns that were built around a single highway — until the highway moved. The gas stations stayed. The traffic didn’t.

Organizations do the same thing. They want breakthroughs but punish the failures that produce them. They want bold thinking from people they’ve trained to play it safe.

If you’ve never failed, you’re not taking enough risks — or people aren’t telling you the truth. Either way, that’s not a performance problem. It’s a culture problem.

Understanding doesn’t just happen. You have to chase it. And the only reliable engine I’ve found for that chase is curiosity.

In Addis Ababa, I found myself outside the Sudanese Embassy.

No appointment.

No guarantee.

No clear answer about whether I’d even be allowed into the country.

The United States and Sudan barely spoke. Most Americans who applied for a visa were turned away.

Sudan was the hinge between where I was and where I was going. Without that visa, the road north disappeared.

A crowd pressed against the consular gate. Women arguing in Arabic. Guards holding rifles like punctuation marks. A short man missing several teeth whisked me inside as if I had some invisible credential.

And then, just as quickly, I was told:

“The visa office is closed.”

“When will it open?”

“Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week.”

No explanation. No escalation path. No system to troubleshoot.

Just a closed door.

I had ridden 50,000 miles to get there. There was nothing to optimize. Nothing to negotiate. Nothing to force.

Just uncertainty. And time.

Standing there, I realized how addicted we are to forward motion. To updates. To progress bars, confirmations, and next steps. When those disappear, so does our sense of control.

Fear whispers: You’re stuck.

Curiosity asks: What is this moment trying to teach you?

So I came back the next morning. And the next. I talked with the guards. I observed the rhythms. I listened more than I pushed.

Eventually, the door opened.

Not because I forced it. Because I stayed.

Turn off the GPS. Unfold the map.

The GPS story is really a story about perspective.

Turn-by-turn directions are efficient, but they shrink your world. They help you arrive without ever understanding where you are.

The GPS shrinks your world to a single route.

The algorithm narrows your view to a single perspective.

Both feel efficient.

Both make you smaller.

So here’s my invitation — not just to leaders, but to anyone trying to make sense of the road ahead.

Turn down the voice prompts once in a while. Unfold the map. Ask what’s really going on. Ask what you’re missing. Ask what’s possible.

Because curiosity isn’t a luxury anymore.

It’s a survival skill.

It’s the engine of innovation, the bridge across conflict, and the antidote to fear.

Curiosity isn’t about having the right answers — it’s about asking the next right question.

I’ve followed the fastest route and ended up exactly where everyone else did.

I’ve taken the long way and found something I didn’t know I was looking for.

The map doesn’t tell you what matters.

You have to look up to find that.

You don’t need better prompts.

You need better questions.

Curiosity isn’t about having the right answers — it’s about asking the next right question.

Stay curious long enough, and something opens.

Allan Karl is a motorcycle adventure traveler, best-selling author, television host, and inspiring keynote speaker who has ridden solo through more than 100 countries and continues to explore the world on two wheels. His award-winning book FORKS: A Quest for Culture, Cuisine, and Connection chronicles three years on the road across five continents. He writes about curiosity, connection, and openness here on Substack and at worldrider.com.