Curiosity! by Ian Kinnery

One of the greatest attitudes to develop is one of curiosity. The ability to wonder how things work, what might happen next, why B followed A, is a wonderful strength. Nowhere is this more powerful than in the field of human relationships. The ability to be curious about another person can lead to a whole new level of insight and closeness. A person listening with curiosity is likely to listen much more carefully and much more respectfully to another. Someone curious as to what is going on for the other person, genuinely interested in what the other person thinks is likely to ask better and more insightful questions, often helping the speaker to explore areas that they wouldn’t have otherwise explored.

By curiosity I don’t mean a nosy, intrusive gossiping type of selfish wanting to know, but a genuine, well meaning, non judgemental curiosity that emanates from the best part of our selves based on an authentic level of care. That well founded curiosity can and will lead to deeper levels of relationship, to questions and ultimately therefore to understandings. If we truly care about others, then the natural corollary of that is that we will want to understand more about those others and that is the basis of well founded, well meaning curiosity. I wonder, on a scale of 0 to 10 where 0 is “could care less” and 10 is “passionately curious” where would you rate yourself on this skill scale and what would it take to move that up a point or two?