get curious

We just came off of 30 days of encouraging curiosity in the workplace and in life in general and something interesting occurred. Instead of being satiated by what we learned, we are even more curious now. I guess that is an effect of opening one’s self up to new experiences and new ideas.

Over the course of the 30 days, here are a few things we learned:

  • The word curious comes from the Latin for “care”
  • Brian Grazer wrote a great book on curiosity called “A Curious Mind”
  • We learned from that book that curiosity makes people more successful, more connected, and more adventurous
  • Curiosity is a spark for so many behaviors: creativity, inspiration, and motivation among them
  • It is also a key to independence and self-confidence
  • We learned many of us like to try new things (mochi) and learn about topics we thought we knew a lot about (Shakespeare) and some we didn’t know much about (Fika)

When we went digging to find ways to practice curiosity, we found a few simple guidelines that we can easily bring to our days:

  • Keep an open mind. No jumping to conclusions.
  • Do not take things at face value – question relentlessly. Somewhere along the way, our inner child who was full of curiosity gets stifled. Let him or her out!
  • Don’t label something as boring. I wish I had known this one in high school.
  • Read from a diverse pool of resources – at Synapse, magazines are always on hand. And they are just one of the forms of media we like to consume.

30 days flew by and it was a lot of fun to let our imaginations go. Our official month of curiosity may have ended, but our interests have just been piqued.

As writer Elizabeth Gilbert says, “The trick is to just follow your small moments of curiosity. It doesn’t take a massive effort. Just turn your head an inch. Pause for an instant.”

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