By Jeff Mortimore

What makes you curious? Remember a time when you wished that a day would never end, or that you could repeat the process again and again? It’s never too late to return to that sense of wonder and curiosity; to open up to personal growth and experience more meaningful results.

When we shift the focus from outcome to a process that includes discovery and curiosity, students become more attentive and inquisitive. Throughout this process they begin to experience flow, which Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes as a state that occurs people consciously focus on a creative activity in which they feel strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious, and at the peak of their abilities (2016). When encouraged to be curious, students engage in learning through multiple senses and are more apt to absorb information as a result. This consequently opens up more opportunities for personal growth and experiential understanding.

When an organization or classroom fosters a culture of curiosity, wonderful things happen. People become interested and intentional about where they put their energy; distractions fall off, and focus becomes more acute. Curiosity invokes a kind of deep listening that occurs when we turn off the chatter in the brain, and the experience of this process can be profoundly transformative when we focus on something in this way.