Curiosity Leads to Success
Posted on April 09, 2013 by Jessica Austin, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
A story about how increasing curiosity leads to curing cancer. How positive psychology can help you create a pathway to success for your clients.
At first glance Jack Andraka’s Justin-Berber-haircut marks him as an average, run-of-the-mill teenager. Look a little closer and you will find that this fifteen year old is anything but. It isn’t the fact that Jack swept the 75 thousand dollar grand prize at the Intel Science Fair before he could even legally drive, it is that this wonder-kid may have single-handedly changed medicine. As in Nobel Prize scale change. Andraka recently invented a new “dipstick” test for pancreatic cancer that is 28 times faster than easier assessments, and far more accurate and less expensive. In short, Jack won a medical trifecta, creating a breakthrough test that is fast, cheap and spot on. It is easy to think that, perhaps, Jack is simply preternaturally gifted. Maybe his IQ is in the stratosphere. The truth is, Jack’s greatness rests in a quality that all of us have: curiosity.
Fortunately we all have the capacity to be curious and ultimately a whiz in our own right. Curiosity is a knowledge emotion. Knowledge emotions aren’t what we typically think of when asked to make a list of emotions. Usually people list fear, happiness, and anger before they would think to add interest, confusion, surprise, or awe. It is through these emotional states that we find flow, and are able to broaden and build our understanding of the world around us. According to the research intellectual curiosity is at the top of the list for determining leadership potential, along with emotional intelligence, and openness to learning. Knowledge emotions are a gateway to leadership and success.
There are a couple of ways in which we can cultivate curiosity in ourselves and in others. For our own curiosity boost, simply changing up our routine is a great way to have different experiences and discover new things. Is there more than one way to commute to and from work? What secret gem might you find by switching routes from the freeway, to the back streets? As a leader or parent, providing an environment where others can discover and experience things for themselves is a great way to peak curiosity and encourage problem solving.
In a recent interview with The Baltimore Sun, Jane Andraka noted “… we’re not a super-athletic family. We don’t go to much football or baseball.” “Instead we have a million [science] magazines [and] sit around the table and talk about how people came up with their ideas and what we would do differently.” We are a curious bunch at Positive Acorn, and we are interested in learning what ways you increase curiosity in your household or office.
