It is good to be inquisitive to stay relevant in professional field. Better to avoid prying on everything otherwise your curiosity may kill the cat! Well, both these sentences just clarify the meaning of ‘Word of the Day’ and ‘Idiom of the Day’ from the Toastmasters Club meeting that we had a few days ago. The theme of our meeting was ‘Stay Curious’.
Steve Jobs famously mentioned “Stay hungry, stay foolish”. Likewise many stalwarts have pointed towards making efforts for continuous learning and pushing ourselves to aspire higher and move out of our comfort zone. Humans have tremendous capacity to keep evolving and performing better each day. ‘Kaizen’ concept if you wish!
Some of the relevant words, phrases and idioms used during the course of our meeting are shared below:-
- I am what I think.
- Ask exploratory questions.
- You can’t be successful at work if it is all what you do.
- Icebath.
- Killed my fears.
- Reframing.
- Self-love.
- Focus on excellence rather that perfection.
- Take up the challenge.
- In the journey.
- Break the barrier.
- Breakout from your comfort zone.
- Authentic.
- Resilience.
- Lifelong learner.
If we glance through the words and phrases above we will find that these are about encouraging us to dive deeper to keep exploring and learning.
The book ‘The Power of Curiosity‘ by Anita Karwal and others is a very interesting read for educators as well as general readers. It brings out exciting facets of curiosity and its relevance for the future generations and society. It is written using many figures of speech and comes alive with role play, metaphors and personification. The role played by different parts of the brain as classrooms in articulating its usage is very novel and innovative. There are various characters as students and other members of the school and the society. Powerful methods have been used to demonstrate the necessity of imbibing curiosity amongst children.
Some highlights mentioned in the end of the book as under:-
- Empathy and curiosity must be reinforced.
- Nurture curiosity to build creativity.
- Written from quintessential child perspective.
- Learning is non-linear.
- Teacher’s innovation is more useful than pedagogy.
- Avoid conditioning.
- Raise expectations from children like Pygmalion effect.
- Car is used as a tool in the learning ecosystem.
- Lots of use of metaphors.
- Reference of Sun to signify power of enlightening ourselves.
In summation we can say that curiosity is an essential quality to help us in our continuous improvement. We must keep exploring to keep anxiety at bay and enhance self-esteem, self-image and self-confidence.
