Curiosidades B.L.C – Heighten Your Curiosity

Albert Einstein, one of the most innovative thinkers in history, said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

Your outcomes are greatly determined by the quality of the questions that you ask yourself and others. Heightening your curiosity improves the quality of your life. People who are curious are open to thousands of potentialities and therefore increase their power to find the best solutions, the most lucrative offers, and the most creative ideas. Rather than being entrenched in their current beliefs, they withhold judgment, knowing that the last chapter has yet to be written.

The power that heightening your curiosity can create in your life is truly unlimited. When you put past judgments aside, you come up with some of your most innovative ideas. For example, when Henry Ford made a commitment to develop an "unbreakable" glass for car windshields his highly educated engineers reported that it was "impossible." Undaunted, Ford directed them to find someone who didn't know it was impossible. The plant recruited some curious engineers who had not yet accumulated a mass of limitations based on what they "knew" and this group came up with the formula to manufacture shatterproof glass. A commitment to curiosity solved a seemingly impossible problem and has saved scores of lives in the decades since this innovation was introduced.

If you've ever spent time with a young child, you know that curiosity is a natural gift. Children are like miniature reporters, constantly asking who, what, when, where, and particularly why. They also have very few preconceived notions, so they’re open to taking in new information without being constrained by biases and judgments. An exchange with the seven-year-old daughter of a friend highlights this openness.

She said, "My mom told me not to talk to strangers." I agreed that her mother had given her savvy advice. But then she asked, "What is a stranger?" I easily replied, "A stranger is someone you don't know." She thought for a moment and replied, "But I didn't know any of my friends when I met them, so they were all strangers, weren't they?" What could I say? She had me. In that moment, I realized that thinking like a child opened doorways that most adults had closed years before.

Young children believe that most everything is possible. Until someone convinces them otherwise, or until they become jaded through failures or disappointments, the world is a wide open place filled with delightful possibilities. They can imagine flowers that talk and spaceships that shrink down small enough to fit under their bed. Nothing is off limits. To reconnect with that open sense of possibility is one of the most powerful benefits of heightening your natural gift of curiosity. Making it a practice to think like this, at least a few times each day can trigger countless ideas for personal innovation.