Today’s Elite Mindset lesson. Be as curious as a dog.
Nietzche said: “Learning to see the world is strange makes us unhome in the everyday and thereby restores it as a potential place of wonder”. If we don’t resist it, if we move towards confusion and dissonance and not knowing it generates wonder. It only doesn’t generate wonder if we resist it.
I’ve read half of a book called “Teaching Quantum Physics to Dogs”. I like the premise of the book, it said: “to a dog every moment is confusing, every moment is like “I don’t know what is going on here, but I’m going to work it out””.
A dog is perfectly predisposed to understand quantum physics because the world is perpetually confusing and changing and shifting, and I love that. So I try and stay in a state of being on the edge of not knowing.
Steve Chapman, on a recent Be More Pirate Podcast, hosted by Alex Barker
Alex Barker recently was a second-time guest on #WhatComesNextLive, or, to be more accurate, “She turned the tables on me” and interviewed me, a lovely experience and one where she asked me some great questions that truly had me ponder. After that podcast recording, I recognised I had not yet listened to any of her #BeMorePirate pods, so went on and found, with some joy, that the most recent was with the amazing Steve Chapman.
I loved listening to the podcast, full of wisdom, including the “Not a Lost Cat” project (my own Not a Lost Cat poster is hanging in a coffee shop in Cayman). Another example not discussed among his many “wonky” ideas is his brilliant long term planning flowchart that I wrote about in “The Perfect 10-Year Plan” and that hangs behind me in my office as a reminder to “Memento Mori” and “Carpe Diem“.
So, back to being as curious as a dog.
As Steve puts it: “to a dog every moment is confusing, every moment is like “I don’t know what is going on here, but I’m going to work it out”.
Open Leadership is about being Brave, Hungry, Open and Humble. Within the latter two attributes is embedded the power of Curiosity, which, when allied with confidence that “I’m going to work it out”, is the type of leader we need in today’s businesses, the type of leader people will choose to follow.
PS as a check-in on your level of curiosity, how many of the links in this post did you follow? 😉