📕𝘾𝙃12:(🐛𝙏𝙃𝙀15 𝙑Æ𝙇𝙐𝘼𝙉𝙇𝙀 𝙇𝘼𝙒 𝙤𝙛

[P1] 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝟙𝟝 𝕀ℕ𝕍𝔸𝕃𝕌𝔸𝔹𝕃𝔼 𝕃𝔸𝕎𝕊 𝕆𝔽 𝔾ℝ𝕆𝕎𝕋ℍ. “LIVE THEM AND REACH YOUR POTENTIAL” - JOHN C. MAXWELL- CHAPTER 12 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐭𝐡 𝐈𝐬 𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐀𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐡𝐲? “ꜱᴏᴍᴇ ᴍᴇɴ ꜱᴇᴇ ᴛʜɪɴɢꜱ ᴀꜱ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀꜱᴋ ᴡʜʏ. ᴏᴛʜᴇʀꜱ ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ ᴛʜɪɴɢꜱ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀꜱᴋ ᴡʜʏ ɴᴏᴛ.” —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW When I was a freshman in college taking Psychology 101, everyone in the class was asked to take a creativity test. Much to my surprise and dismay, my score was among the worst in the class. What’s so bad about that? you may ask. Lots of people aren’t very creative. The problem was that I knew I was going to be speaking for a living, and there are few things worse than a boring speaker. How was I going to overcome this potential deficit to my career potential? I relied on a different quality that I possessed in abundance: curiosity. I’ve been curious for as long as I can remember. As a teen growing up, I was typical and very similar to my friends in most ways—except one. They loved to sleep in, but I got up early every morning. I was always afraid that if I stayed in bed, I would miss something! I find that funny now, because I lived in a little town in central Ohio where very little happened, so what was there to miss? Yet this practice set me apart from my peers. I began to use this natural trait to collect quotes, stories, and ideas. I thought to myself, The best way to keep from being boring is to quote people who aren’t boring. I started looking for ideas that were stated in a funny or clever or inspiring way. But guess what happened after I had done that for several years? I began to ask why their statements and stories were so interesting. Why were they cute? Why did people laugh at them? Why were they innovative? Why did people connect with them? Before long, I was learning from the quotes I was collecting, and I was using the same kind of slant to make my own ideas creative and memorable. It took my communication to a whole new level. And better yet, it stimulated my growth and development.

[P2] 𝙒𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝘿𝙤𝙚𝙨 𝘾𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙤𝙨𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙁𝙧𝙤𝙢? Was I born with this natural curiosity? Or was it something that was instilled in me? I don’t know the answer, but I do know this: I have continued to be curious and to cultivate curiosity all my life. And that’s important, because I believe curiosity is the key to being a lifelong learner, and if you want to keep growing and developing, you must keep on learning. Curious people possess a thirst for knowledge. They are interested in life, people, ideas, experiences, and events, and they live in a constant state of wanting to learn more. They continually ask why? Curiosity is the primary catalyst for self-motivated learning. People who remain curious don’t need to be encouraged to ask questions or explore. They just do it—all the time. And they keep doing it. They know that the trail to discovery is just as exciting as the discoveries themselves, because there are wonderful things to be learned along the way. Curiosity helps a person to think and expand possibilities beyond the ordinary. Asking why? fires the imagination. It leads to discovery. It opens up options. It takes people beyond the ordinary and leads to extraordinary living. People say not to cross a bridge until you come to it, but as someone once said, “This world is owned by people who have crossed bridges in their imagination before anyone else has.” I believe that’s why Nobel Prize–winning physicist Albert Einstein said, “All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out.” Einstein made his discoveries because he was a curious person. And he valued his curious nature and imagination as his greatest qualities.

[P3] 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲. I love curious people. I enjoy spending time with them and conversing with them. Their excitement for knowledge and learning is contagious. I often wonder why more people aren’t curious. So many people seem to be indifferent. Why don’t they ask why? Are some people simply born without the desire to learn? Are some people just mentally lazy? Or does life become so routine for some people that they don’t mind living in a rut, doing the same things day in and day out? Can such people “wake up” their minds and become more curious so growth becomes more natural to them? I certainly hope so. I believe so. It’s why I have written this chapter. And it is why I recommend the following ten suggestions for cultivating curiosity: 

[P4] 1. 𝘽𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙫𝙚 𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝘾𝙖𝙣 𝘽𝙚 𝘾𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙤𝙪𝙨. Many people fill their minds with limiting beliefs. Their lack of personal confidence or self-esteem causes them to create barriers for themselves and put limitations on how and what they think. The result? They fail to reach their potential —not because they lack capacity but because they are unwilling to expand their beliefs and break new ground. We cannot perform outwardly in a way that is inconsistent with how we think inwardly. You cannot be what you believe you aren’t. But here’s the good news: You can change your thinking and as a result, your life. Give yourself permission to be curious. The single greatest difference between curious, growing people and those who aren’t is the belief that they can learn, grow, and change. As I explained in the Law of Intentionality, you must go after growth. Knowledge, understanding, and wisdom will not seek you out. You must go out and acquire it. The best way to do that is to remain curious. The single greatest difference between curious, growing people and those who aren’t is the belief that they can learn, grow, and change.

[P5] 2. 𝙃𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙖 𝘽𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙧’𝙨 𝙈𝙞𝙣𝙙-𝙎𝙚𝙩. The way you approach life and learning has nothing to do with your age. It has everything to do with your attitude. Having a beginner’s mind-set means wondering why and asking a lot of questions until you get answers. It also means being open and vulnerable. If your attitude is like that of a beginner, you have no image to uphold and your desire to learn more is stronger than the desire to look good. You aren’t as influenced by preset rules or so-called acceptable thinking. Management expert Peter Drucker said, “My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.” That’s having a beginner’s mind-set. “My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.” —Peter Drucker People with a beginner’s mind-set approach life the way that a child does: with curiosity. They are like the little girl who kept asking her mother question after question. Finally the mother cried, “For heaven’s sake, stop asking so many questions. Curiosity killed the cat.” After two minutes of thinking, the child asked, “So what did the cat want to know?” The direct opposite of people who have a beginner’s mind-set are the know-it-alls. They see themselves as experts. They have a lot of knowledge, education, and experience, so instead of asking why and starting to listen, they start talking and give answers. Anytime a person is answering more than asking, you can be sure they’ve slowed down in their growth and have lost the fire for personal growth. Anytime a person is answering more than asking, you can be sure they’ve slowed down in their growth and have lost the fire for personal growth.

[P6] 3. 𝙈𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙒𝙝𝙮 𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙁𝙖𝙫𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚 𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙙. Albert Einstein said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.” The secret to maintaining that “holy curiosity” is to always keep asking why. In my early years as a leader I thought I was supposed to be an answering machine. No matter what someone asked, I gave direction, exuded confidence, and answered questions with clarity—whether I really knew what I was doing or not! As I matured, I discovered that growing leaders focused on asking questions, not giving answers. The more questions I asked, the better results we got as a team. And the greater my appetite to ask more questions. Today I have a compulsion to pick the brains of the people I meet. I have become a questioning machine. Speaker and author Brian Tracy says, “A major stimulant to creative thinking is focused questions. There is something about a well-worded question that often penetrates to the heart of the matter and triggers new ideas and insights.” Most of the time, focused questions begin with the word why. That word can really help you to clarify an issue. And it’s important how you ask the question. People with a victim’s mind-set ask, “Why me?” Not because they want to know, but because they feel sorry for themselves. Curious people ask the question to find solutions so they can keep moving forward and making progress. Scientist and philosopher Georg Christoph Lichtenberg observed, “One’s first step in wisdom is to question everything—and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.” Those are the bookends for continuous growth. Ask why. Explore. Evaluate what you discover. Repeat. That’s a pretty good formula for growth. Never forget, anyone who knows all the answers is not asking the right questions.

[P7] 4. 𝙎𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙙 𝙏𝙞𝙢𝙚 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙊𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝘾𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙤𝙪𝙨 𝙋𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚. When you think of curiosity, growth, and learning, do you think of formal education? I think in the early grades curiosity is encouraged, but after that, it’s not. Most formal education steers people toward answers rather than questions. If you went to college, how many times did you hear a professor ask students to hold their questions until later so he could get through his notes or complete the syllabus? The emphasis is often on information over inquiry. So do you find an attitude of openness and inquiry in the corporate world instead? Usually not. Most corporations don’t try to stimulate curiosity either. Jerry Hirshberg, in his book The Creative Priority: Putting Innovation to Work in Your Business, writes, No one in a corporation deliberately sets out to stifle creative thought. Yet, a traditional bureaucratic structure, with its need for predictability, linear logic, conformance to accepted norms, and the dictates of the most recent “long-range” vision statement, is a nearly perfect idea-killing machine. People in groups regress toward the security of the familiar and the well-regulated. Even creative people do it. It’s easier. It avoids the ambiguity, the fear of unpredictability, the threat of the unfamiliar, and the messiness of intuition and human emotion. So what must you do to cultivate curiosity and stimulate growth? You must seek out other curious people. A couple of years ago, Margaret and I went to Jordan on vacation. We love history and art, and for years we’d heard and read about Petra, the ancient city carved out of sandstone. If you’ve seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you may remember the façade carved in stone that contained the passage to where the Holy Grail was hidden. That scene in the movie was filmed outside the Treasury in Petra. When we visited Petra, we walked for miles. At that time, I needed knee replacement surgery, so I found the experience to be difficult and painful. By lunchtime, I was exhausted and the pain in my knee was excruciating. While we ate, the guide told us there was one more beautiful place to be seen cut in the rock. It was on the next mountain, and we could go see it, but we would have to go on our own. Most people opted out. Like me, they were tired. I said no to the experience as well. But as we sat and ate lunch and the few who decided to make the trip prepared to leave, I started to have second thoughts. They were curious and excited about going, and their excitement started to stimulate and inspire me. My old curiosity kicked in and I couldn’t stand the thought of missing something, so Margaret and I decided to join the group. It took us an hour to get up the mountain and two hours to get back down, but it was worth it. I didn’t even mind having to spend most of the evening back in our hotel room soaking my knee. Being around people with great curiosity is contagious. I know of few better ways of cultivating and sustaining curiosity. 

[P8] 5. 𝙇𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙣 𝙎𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝙀𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝘿𝙖𝙮. One of the best ways 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. Doing this requires three things. First, you must wake up with an attitude of openness to something new. You must see the day as having multiple opportunities to learn. Second, you must keep your eyes and ears open as you go through the day. Most unsuccessful people accept their day, tuning things out, simply hoping to endure it. Most successful people seize their day, focusing in, ignoring distractions. Growing people remain focused, yet maintain a sensitivity and awareness that opens them up to new experiences. The third component is reflection. It does little good to see something new without taking time to think about it. It does no good to hear something new without applying it. I’ve found that the best way to learn something new is to take time at the end of the day to ask yourself questions that prompt you to think about what you learned. For years I’ve made it my practice to review my day and pull out the highlights. Remember, experience is not the best teacher; evaluated experience is. Experience is not the best teacher; evaluated experience is.

[P9] 6. 𝙋𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙁𝙧𝙪𝙞𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙁𝙖𝙞𝙡𝙪𝙧𝙚. A curious, growing person approaches failure in a way completely different from someone who isn’t curious. Most people see failure, mistakes, and errors as signs of weakness. When they fail, they say, “I’ll never do that again!” But people who grow and develop see failure as a sign of progress. They know that it is impossible to continually try without sometimes failing. It’s part of the curiosity journey. Therefore, they make failure their friend. When failure is your friend, you don’t ask, “How can I distance myself from this experience?” Instead, you ask, “Why did this happen? What can I learn? How can I grow from this?” As a result, you fail fast, learn fast, and get to try again fast. That leads to growth and future success. 

[P10] 7. 𝙎𝙩𝙤𝙥 𝙇𝙤𝙤𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙍𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝘼𝙣𝙨𝙬𝙚𝙧. Because of my personality type, I’m someone who is always looking for options. However, I know that there are many people with different personality types who are motivated to find the right answer to any question. Believe it or not, that is a problem. These “single solution” people are not putting themselves in the best situation to learn and grow. Why? Because there is always more than one solution to a problem. If you believe there is only a single right solution, you either get frustrated because you can’t find it, or if you think you have found it, you stop searching and perhaps miss better ideas. In addition, when you land on what you consider to be the right answer, you become complacent. No idea is perfect. No matter how good it is, it can always be improved. You’ve probably heard the expression, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That phrase definitely was not coined by someone dedicated to personal growth. If that has been your mind-set in the past, then I suggest you develop a questioner’s mind-set instead and replace the popular phrase with the following questions: 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? People with curiosity keep asking questions, and as a result, they keep learning. Several years ago, I sold my companies so I could focus my energy and spend more time writing and speaking. But after a while, I became frustrated. I could see that the resources I had developed over many years to help others grow, develop, and learn leadership weren’t reaching people the way I thought they could. So in 2011, I bought them back and started the John Maxwell Company so I could direct that process again. I am so excited because I love my team. It’s small, fast, focused, and highly talented. I’ve put everything in their hands and turned them loose to make things happen. And I’ve told them that I want them to come to work every morning convinced that there is a better way of doing everything they do, determined to find out who can help them learn to do it, and ready to make things better than they’ve ever been. And they’re doing it! Roger von Oech, author of A Whack on the Side of the Head, says, “Almost every advance in art, cooking, medicine, agriculture, engineering, marketing, politics, education, and design has occurred when someone challenged the rules and tried another approach.”2 If you want to avoid growing too comfortable and becoming stagnant, then keep asking questions and challenging the process. Keep asking if there is a better way to do things. Will that annoy complacent and lazy people? Yes. Will it energize, challenge, and inspire growing people? Yes! “Almost every advance in art, cooking, medicine, agriculture, engineering, marketing, politics, education, and design has occurred when someone challenged the rules and tried another approach.” —Roger von Oech

 [P11] 8. 𝙂𝙚𝙩 𝙊𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛 If you’re going to ask questions and allow yourself to fail, then you will at times look foolish. Most people don’t like that. Do you know what my response is? Get over yourself! As Roger von Oech says, “If we never tried anything that might make us look ridiculous, we’d still be in caves.” Instead, we need to be more like children. The thing I love about young children is that they just ask. They don’t worry if a question is foolish. They just ask it. They don’t worry about whether they will look dumb trying something new. They just do it. And as a result, they learn. Richard Thalheimer, founder of the Sharper Image, says, “It’s better to look uninformed than to be uninformed. Curb your ego and keep asking questions.” That’s great advice. 

[P12] 9. 𝙂𝙚𝙩 𝙊𝙪𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘽𝙤𝙭. I’ve always loved the quote by inventor Thomas Edison, “There ain’t no rules around here! We’re trying to accomplish something!” Edison was forever trying to innovate, to think outside of the box. Most revolutionary ideas were disruptive violations of existing rules. They upset the old order. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” “There ain’t no rules around here! We’re trying to accomplish something!” —Thomas Edison I value innovative thinking, and I am easily frustrated by people who refuse to think outside of their self-imposed boxes. When people say things like, “We’ve never done it that way before” or “That’s not my job,” I just want to shake them up. I want to offer to do their funeral, because they’ve already died and are obviously just waiting for somebody to make it official. Good ideas are everywhere, but it’s hard to see them when you won’t look outside of your box. Instead of remaining confined, people need to break down the walls of their boxes, get out, and become hunters of ideas. That requires an abundance mind-set. Unfortunately, most in-the-box thinkers possess a scarcity mind-set. They don’t think there are many resources to go around. They believe they can’t. Author Brian Klemmer says, “One of the keys to abundance is having a solutionoriented mind-set. The average person thinks of himself as positive, but he’s not solution oriented.” In other words, most people live inside the box instead of outside of it. They live with their limitations. Klemmer observes, When average people ask themselves, “Can I do this?” they base it on the circumstances they see…. An abundant thinker asks different questions. An abundant thinker asks, “How can I?” This simple twist of semantics changes everything. It forces your mind to create a solution.3 The best way to make a sluggish mind active is to disturb its routine. Getting outside the box does that for a person.

[P13] 10. 𝙀𝙣𝙟𝙤𝙮 𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙇𝙞𝙛𝙚. Perhaps the greatest way to remain curious and keep growing is to enjoy life. Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence, observed, “The race will go to the curious, the slightly mad, and those with an unsatiated passion for learning and daredeviltry.” I believe it honors God when we enjoy life and live it well. That means taking risks— sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always learning. When you enjoy your life, the lines between work and play begin to blur. We do what we love and love what we do. Everything becomes a learning experience. 

[P14] 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐖𝐚𝐬 𝐇𝐢𝐬 𝐊𝐞𝐲. Would you say that someone who earned a PhD, was a professor at a prestigious university, and won a Nobel Prize for physics had probably done a pretty good job of tapping into his potential? How about if you also learned that the person had been invited to help invent the first atomic bomb on the Manhattan Project when he was only in his twenties? That’s a pretty strong résumé, isn’t it? What would be the key to such a person’s success? Most people would guess intelligence. But this scientist was reputed to have an above-average IQ of only 125.4 Sure, he was intelligent, but the real secret to his growth and success was an insatiable curiosity. His name was Richard Feynman (pronounced Fine-man). The son of a uniform salesman from New York City, he was always encouraged to ask questions and think for himself. As a child of eleven, he built electrical circuits and did experiments at home and soon got a reputation for being able to fix radios. He was always exploring, learning, asking why. He began learning algebra in elementary school. He mastered trigonometry and both differential and integral calculus at age fifteen.5 It was play for him. When his high school physics teacher became frustrated with him, he handed him a book, saying, “You talk too much and you make too much noise. I know why. You’re bored. Study this book, and when you know everything that’s in this book, you can talk again.” It was an advanced calculus book from a course for college seniors!6 Feynman devoured it. It became another tool in his toolbox for learning about the world. He had a lifelong love for solving puzzles and breaking codes. When he was in high school, his classmates knew this and threw at him every kind of puzzle, equation, geometry problem, or brainteaser that they could find. He solved them all.

[P15] 𝐇𝐢𝐬 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐊𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐍𝐨 𝐁𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬. Feynman’s desire to know why drove him to study anything and everything. He wasn’t interested only in physics or mathematics. Any idea could spark his interest. For example, when he studied physics as an undergraduate student at MIT, he took a summer job as a chemist. When he was at Princeton studying for his PhD, he would eat lunch with gradate students from other disciplines so he could learn what questions they were asking and what problems they were trying to solve. Because of that he ended up taking PhD-level courses in philosophy and biology. That curiosity continued his entire life. One summer he decided to do advanced work in genetics.8 Another time, on vacation in Guatemala, he taught himself how to read ancient Mayan writing, which led him to make significant mathematical and astronomical discoveries in an ancient manuscript.9 He became an expert on art, learned to draw, and became good enough to have a one-man show.10 He was a lifelong learner. Feynman did experience a brief period when his curiosity waned. It was after the exhausting and demanding years he spent on the Manhattan Project. He went through a kind of slump and believed that he had burned out. He lost the will to explore. But then he figured out what the problem was. Feynman wrote, I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it…. It didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing or fun to play with. When I was in high school, I’d see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn’t have to do it; it wasn’t important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn’t make any difference: I’d invent things and play with things for my own entertainment. So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out, and I’ll never accomplish anything… I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever. That change in mind-set enabled him to rekindle his curiosity and cure his “burnout.” As a result, he started to ask why again. Soon after this, he saw someone in the university cafeteria spin a plate by throwing it into the air. He wondered why the plate spun and wobbled the way it did. He figured it out mathematically and made some drawings, just for fun. The diagrams and math he did while doing what he called “piddling around with the wobbling plate” are what led to his receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics.So he did end up doing things that were important to science. But that occurred simply because he wanted to know why for his own growth and satisfaction! Feynman lived the Law of Curiosity. Do you? To know the answer, ask yourself these ten questions: 1. Do you believe you can be curious? 2. Do you have a beginner’s mind-set? 3. Have you made why your favorite word? 4. Do you spend time with curious people? 5. Do you learn something new every day? 6. Do you partake in the fruit of failure? 7. Have you stopped looking for the right answer? 8. Have you gotten over yourself? 9. Do you get out of the box? 10. Are you enjoying your life? If your answers are yes, then you probably are. If not, you need to change. And you can. Being able to answer yes to those questions has little to do with native intelligence, level of talent, or access to opportunities. It has everything to do with developing curiosity and a willingness to ask why? “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” —Dorothy Parker Writer and wit Dorothy Parker observed, “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” How true that is. When you’re curious, the entire world opens up to you and there are few limits on what you can learn and how you can develop.

[P16] 𝐀𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞. 1. Think about the three to five major areas in your life where you focus most of your time and energy. How do you see yourself in each of those areas? Do you think of yourself as an expert or a beginner? If you see yourself as an expert, you may be in trouble when it comes to further growth. Beginners know they have a lot to learn and are open to every possible idea. They are willing to think outside of the box. They don’t get hung up on preconceived notions. They are willing to try new things. If you have a beginner’s mind-set in an area, do everything you can to maintain it. If you have come to think of yourself as an expert, beware! Find a way to rekindle a learner’s attitude. Find a mentor who is ahead of you in that area. Or do what Richard Feynman did: Look for the fun again. 2. Make a list of the people you spend the most time with in a given week. Now rateeach person on his or her level of curiosity. Are the majority of people in your world questioners? Do they often ask why? Do they like to learn new things? If not, you need to make some intentional changes to spend time with more curious people. 3. One of the greatest obstacles to curiosity and learning is the reluctance to look foolish in the eyes of other people. There are two easy ways to tell if this is a potential problem in your life: The first is being afraid to fail. The second is taking yourself too seriously. The cure is to take what I call “learning risks.” Sign up to do or learn something that takes you completely out of your comfort zone. Take an art class. Sign up for dance lessons. Study a martial art. Learn a foreign language. Find a master at calligraphy or bonsai to train you. Just be certain to pick something that you find fun, where you cannot be seen as an expert, and that is far out of your comfort zone.