The law of curiosity (DW#394)

Have you noticed how curious children are? They constantly want to know how things work or why they are the way they are. They rarely accept things at face value, an explanation is almost always required. 

As we age, many of us begin to lose this natural curiosity. 
In order to grow, learn something new or get better at anything, we need to get our curiosity back. 

Maxwell suggests ten ways to re-cultivate our natural curiosity. Here are my favorites: 

Have a Beginner’s Mind-Set

Maxwell says that in order to grow, we must keep our beginners’ mind-set. Instead of being a know it all who see themselves as experts, beginners spend their time asking questions like "how can we do this better or more efficiently".

Make "Why" Your Favorite Word

As we become successful (and older!), we start believing we should have answers for other people. But Maxwell believes that we are much more useful when we are asking questions.

So let us practice asking why to everything, just as we did when we were young. It can be really fun and stimulating to explore answers to the whys that we ask - even if end up being annoying sometimes :)

Learn Something New Every Day

Maxwell says that the best way to remain curious is to begin each day with a determination to learn something new, experience something different, or meet someone you don’t already know.

Accomplishing this requires you to do three things every day:

• Wake up with an attitude of openness- You have to be open to experiencing new things.
• Keep your eyes and ears open- Curious, growing people remain focused while also staying on the lookout for new experiences.
• Reflection- In order to benefit from new experiences, we need to take the time to reflect on what we learnt from them

Have you heard the phrase: "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it". In other words do not mess with things that appear to be working okay. According to Maxwell, this attitude kills curiosity. Instead, he suggests rephrasing it in three ways:

• If it ain’t broke, how can we make it better?
• If it ain’t broke, when is it likely to break in the future?
• If it ain’t broke, how long will it serve as the world changes?

If we are curious and keep trying and learning new things, we will look silly from time to time. It can be embarrassing to ask questions which seem obvious to most people. Maxwell’s advice: get over yourself.

If we want to remain curious and growing, we must be willing to look foolish often. We have to be OK with asking stupid questions in front of other people.

Which one of these will you try first?

Remember that The race will go to the curious, the slightly mad, and those with an unsaturated passion for learning and daredevilry. Tom Peters