Curiosity may kill the cat, but it can save YOUR butt.
Curiosity is a great business-development tool, despite how folk wisdom blames it for a lot of feline deaths. Why is this? Because curiosity will:
- create a can-do mindset that enables you to assume there is a solution to any obstacle, no matter how challenging
- lead you to identify new ways of solving problems that can set you high above the competition
- enable you to identify and seize opportunities others have ignored or simply not noticed
Better yet, curiosity can be a great sanity saver.
Even successful entrepreneurs can fall victim to beating up on themselves when they get poor results. However, the only thing such self-flagellation does is undermine your confidence and your willingness to persist until you succeed.
Instead of going into a self-defeating rendition of “Nobody likes me; everybody hates me. Might as well eat worms…”, shift your perspective from one of blame and condemnation to one of neutrality and curiosity.
- Acknowledge that your results were less than you desired.
- Resist any temptation to blame those results on character flaws (e.g., “I’m so lazy”, “I’m so stupid when it comes to social media” and so forth). Instead, focus on activities you did or did not take.
- Identify the impact of each activity you took and brainstorm ways you could have implemented it more effectively.
- Evaluate how activities you did not implement contributed to your less-than-optimal results, then use this as an impetus to move on them next time.
- Any time you start drifting toward self-blame, shift your mental talk from blame to simple acknowledgment, then move on to problem solving.
What are your thoughts on this? What’s been your experience with being neutral and curious instead of blaming and judgmental? How has that moved you toward business success?
(Thanks to Robert Taylor for the kitty picture and net_efekt for the worm image; I found both in the Creative Commons section of Flickr.)
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