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Article 6 of 7: Reason Six – Encourages Curiosity and Learning
This is the sixth article in a series of seven reasons why science validates you ought to focus on Applied Positive Intentions because they can help you live an even more meaningful, flourishing and prosperous professional and personal life. In this article we focus on how applied positive intentions encourages curiosity and learning.
If you missed the previous articles, you can read them here.
Just to remind you, an intention is one thing, but taking action to fulfill or live up to your positive intention to make life better for others in your professional and personal life, is what creates the more powerful Applied Positive Intention.
Here are the 7 evidence-based reasons why you ought to understand and act on Applied Positive Intentions:
- Increases Self-Determination
- Develops Trust
- Enhances Meaning and Purpose
- Builds Positivity
- Increases Goal Achievement
- Encourages Curiosity and Learning
- Develops Clarity, Agility and Resilience
In the previous articles we’ve examined how Applied Positive Intentions increase self-determination, develops trust, enhances meaning and purpose in our lives, builds positivity and increases goal achievement. In this article we explore how Applied Positive Intentions encourages curiosity and learning.
Encourages Curiosity and Learning:
When you think of what it means to be curious, I’m curious to how you do think about curiosity?
In his excellent book ‘Curious: Discover the missing link to a fulfilling life’, Todd Kashdan suggests “Being curious is about how we relate to our thoughts and feelings. It’s not about whether we pay attention, but how we pay attention to what is happening in the present.”
By living your professional and personal life through the lens of applied positive intentions, you will be more open to exploring, researching and discovering ways to be able to ‘live up to’ your positive intentions to make life better for others – for your customers, colleagues, family, friends and others who you might impact through your various life roles.
In other words, you become more curious, which results in you adopting more of a life-long-learning approach.
As Kashdan writes, “Besides transforming trivial moments, curiosity offers a gateway to creating profound intimacy, insights, and meaning in life.”
Humans are meaning makers
One of our greatest capacities as human beings is to be able to reflect on any situation, search for and determine meaning from that situation.
In our workplace, this is such an important attribute to apply.
Using an applied positive intention approach to our customers in particular, will lead us to constantly be seeking and discovering new ways to create even better customer experiences.
In other words, we get more curious about how we are living up to our applied positive customer intentions.
When things don’t go so well, or mistakes are made, curiosity allows us to reflect on the causes of any situation. When the situation is negative our curiosity will lead us to make amends, and when positive, our curiosity helps us to discover ways to repeat and maintain the positive customer experiences.
Again, the message is clear for every corporate leader.
Coach and guide your employees to write out positive intention statements for their customers and regularly report back on how they are living up to their positive customer intentions and you will; boost the level of self-determination in your people, develop more inter and intra team trust, enhance your people’s sense of meaning and purpose, build their sense of positivity, increase their capacity for goal achievement and enhance their curiosity and learning.
The seventh and final article in this series will cover how science validates Applied Positive Intentions develops our capacity for more clarity, agility and resilience in our professional and personal lives.
