Alas, this includes your own mind! Learning to question everything is an art that has to be practiced, but there are pitfalls.  For example, there is a big difference between curiosity and skepticism, which can have quite a negative effect on your mind, mood and interactions with the world. Curiosity is really the process of "empty cup" willing to let go of what you think you know, to expand on it or even look at and hold what seems like contradictory views. As one physicist said: "The ability to hold alternative viewpoints is worth 100 IQ points"! You can't put anything new in the cup if it's all ready filled with fixed views! 

One of the gifts I've gotten from my Buddhist meditation practice (the vipassana style for you meditation nerds out there) is to understand thoughts are just thoughts, and not even really mine. They arise from conditioning and habits, and with the what we "put in the cup", but they aren't really "me" in the technical sense of the word, anymore than the clothes we wear. Notice how thoughts come and go, and change, really on their own. If you are human you've experienced the mind trapped in a thought cycle we can't seem to stop.  And yet, how often do we fight to defend our thoughts, needing to be right over willing to soften our views so wisdom has a chance to leak through. Anyone who has fought with a loved one knows exactly what I'm talking about, and how harmful that can be. I have found even saying "you might be right" when in a discussion, or "tell me more", softens and open the process of connection and expansion of thought. Even seeing and accepting unwholesome thoughts, while not feeding them with more thoughts and emotions, allows them to start to fade away and change. 

And though thoughts are not us or ours in one sense, we indeed are responsible for them and the state of our minds. Notice your mind right now? Is is receptive? Reactive? Tired? Interested? As you start to look at this mind as something with its own process, you see it's true ever-changing nature, and a lot of it beyond our control. In ways you can think of it as no different than nature: sunny today or rainy and therefore bring the proverbial umbrella. I've even learned to share what my mind state is, to let significant others know where I'm at and what I might need to do to manage the process of the mind in this moment. Not knowing what state your mind is in makes you a prisoner to it, and often leads to us supporting a narrative (I'm angry for example) that can build or go on for longer than necessary and lead to serious consequences.  Instead we can begin to see it as the nature of the mind and life, and a result of numerous causes and effects. Just by looking at the mind we create as a space that allows curiosity to arise and the possibility to support wholesome states of mind and not feed unwholesome states of mind. And then the true freedom can occur-If we are not our minds what are we? 

But that is for another day ;)

I hope you enjoyed this, I don't write this for tips-it's ok for those that do, and I welcome them, as I welcome the sunshine on a chilly day, but really this is fun for me to share a small part of my process of questioning things, and I truly hope it offers some benefit to you. May you be free.