Cultivate Your Curiosity

I recently came across the following list written/compiled by David Heenan: Ten Keys to Life Fulfillment:

1. Listen to your heart
2. Take one step at a time
3. Deliver daily
4. Maintain a maverick mind-set
5. Focus, focus, focus
6. Never stop learning
7. Build a brain trust (network of knowledgeable people)
8. Reinvent Yourself
9. Sell Yourself
10. Start now!

This is an awesome list. I love it because it's balanced and has passion and practicality, hard work and faith, hope and focus. . . It's got almost everything.

All of the items on this list are things I dedicate myself to day after day and things which I strive to bring to my students and clients in each lesson and each seminar.

I am of the opinion that we can have everything that we want. We can both have satisfying work that pays us really well and a happy and fulfilling family life which we have plenty of time to nurture. We can choose to continue to grow and learn new ideas and cultivate our interests at any point in our lives.

The only thing I feel is missing from the above list which I most definitely am a proponent of is, 'cultivating curiosity'.

A lot of people struggle with stagnation later on in their careers. The edge just isn't there anymore and there's nothing really spurring continued advancement and growth. Lately I've heard from a number of my students that this is an issue in the financial services field. Many of the contemporaries of my students, as they approach retirement age, begin to find their hunger for achievement on the wane. I can't ever see myself truly retiring. A big part of wanting to continue my work in persuasion is that I have a constant curiosity about what can be improved.

Children have an innate curiosity. When we're new to the world we have a curiosity about absolutely everything. Why is the moon following us? Why is the sky blue? Who invented ice cream? How do birds fly? Then we become inundated by school and maybe we become overwhelmed by all that there is in the world and a lot of times, that curiosity wanes. Who has time to figure it all out?

Curiosity is a desire to know and learn about people, places and things outside of our experience. This is suspiciously similar to gaining rapport with our clients and prospects. There have been times in life when I had no interest in what was going on in the world around me. I'm not suggesting that periods of introspection are not valuable, but our culture seems to nurture navel gazing, that 'me, me, me' attitude, with a bent toward pathologizing and psychologizing ourselves to an unproductive and unhelpful extent.

When we turn our attention outward and open up to the possibilities of what is around us, there is incredible power particularly where persuasion is concerned. Our goal is to persuade our affluent clientle, and when we understand how other people think through keeping our minds and eyes open, and we combine it with what we have to offer, then we have the key to their criteria.

Curiosity can turn even the most mundane situation into an opportunity to learn. The real power of persuasion is in the details.

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Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to earn the business of affluent clients using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion techniques.

Warning: This article is for educational and entertainment purposes only! Never implement, use, or follow the contents of this article without consulting a professional.

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