“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” Walt Disney
Sometimes that warm glow of possibility the New Year brings can start fading as we progress through the months. Unexpected things can crop up preventing us from enthusiastically attacking the freshly made to do list and life gets in the way. It tends to do that on a regular basis! Before you know it, the acceptance of the status quo is back.
Being in business today, whether you own it, run it or have a career in it, you can’t afford to be letting things slip because I can guarantee you’ll be left behind. Time waits for no one and we don’t have time to waste and let things simply happen to us.
There is something that we can all do to stay ahead of the game. It’s something we used to constantly do as kids when we looked at the world in wonder and excitement.
Curiosity.
Curiosity is a hunger to explore, ask questions and enjoy the discovery. Being curious as a kid enabled learning and growth. Being curious as an adult enables the exact same thing because it’s through questioning that we learn. It’s through questioning that we listen and learn so much more about the people we meet, are associated with and are connected to. It also challenges the status quo.
Curiosity can make us interested in not only what is happening around us but broadening our reach. Man wouldn’t have landed on the moon if someone wasn’t curious enough to explore that possibility. We wouldn’t’ have light. We wouldn’t have had a telephone if the amazing inventors hadn’t of asked ‘what if?’. We wouldn’t have had the Internet, the technology we have now or motor vehicles if someone wasn’t curious enough to imagine what was possible and see if they could make it happen. That’s the power of curiosity. As George Bernard Shaw pointed out, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
To stay ahead in business and our careers now, we need to be constantly asking why. Why are things the way they are? Why did certain situations happen? Why are roadblocks roadblocks? Why can’t I do what I want to do right now? Why can’t this app do what I want it to do? Why am I perceived the way I am? Why didn’t I achieve as much as I wanted to do on my to do list this week and what needs to change for next?
And sometimes the better question is how. How have people reached the success I aspire to? How can I push myself to get to the next level? How can I change my situation now? How can I achieve my vision?
But it’s also thinking bigger, much bigger,and being curious about changing the impossible to the possible. It could be easier than you think it is and could beg the question why you didn’t challenge the impossible sooner. As Marie Curie said, “not the practical men, but the dreamers who create new paradigms”.
Be a curious dreamer and be unreasonable. Let’s create new paradigms and change what we thought was impossible to possible.