A Little Bit About "Curiosity" with John O'Leary

One of the many things I need to work on is doing what I say I'm going to do.  Once again, I am challenging myself to complete a blog post each week - not just any blog post, but the same blog post assignment that I have for my students.   We have them connected to our Positivity Project (P2).  There are different character traits (24 in all) that we focus on during the school year.  These character traits - not surprisingly - are NOT just for K - 12 students.  Those of us who have gotten through our own K-12 experience and became adults, need these things (I think) more than our students do!

The episode I listened to from John O'Leary was this episode  Prioritize Things That Matter with Christy Wright (ep. 394) - find it HERE.   So many lessons that I got out of this show (as I do with all of his shows).  Being curious is something that does not come natural to me like it does to my wife.  I have been forcing myself to be more "curious" by finding things to listen to, watch, read, etc., to keep working on getting better. 

I traditionally have not been one to ask a lot of questions, but I'm finding when I do - things go so much better for me in so many different ways.  This quote caught my ear - 

• “Some of the most incredible career opportunities are not positions that are posted but problems that are solved.” – Sheryl Sandburg   

This got me thinking about the fact that I need to be more curious to thinking about solving the problem that pops up, rather than getting worked up about it.  It happened to me one time yesterday afternoon and one time this morning already, where I had just the slightest mind-shift to looking at something to solve or do something good with compared to complaining about it.  AMAZING results from that.   

Secondly, this struck me right in the face... 

• What if “balance” isn’t so much what you do but something you create + become in your life? Life balance is not doing everything for an equal amount of time. It’s about doing the right things at the right times.

I simply need to be curious enough to look at a bit more closely as to how to make this work for me.  Figuring out about doing more of the right things, at the right time - and not rushing through them to simply get them done.  I think the more I open up to see what those items are, the more growth I'll have along with getting closer to goals and dreams that I have in my life.  

Finally, these points that I lumped together really made an impact on me:

• Start doing what matters, stop doing what doesn’t matter in today’s season.
• “If we are not careful we will spend our entire lives checking boxes and never stopping to ask ourselves if those boxes represent anything actually worth doing.”
• Create an ideal schedule. Take your current calendar and a blank calendar:
  • Move over the things you have to do.
  • Move over the things you want to do.
  • Add whatever is missing.
• “We judge others by everything they do and we judge ourselves by everything we don’t do.”

Instead of saying I don't have time for something / anything, I need to start asking myself the question -"is this a priority for me"?  I love the mindset shift about this and asking myself is this something that matters to me in my life or is it something that I'm doing for other reasons that don't really matter to me, my family, my goals and dreams, my priorities, etc. This is a whole new thought process for me about being more curious and asking questions, looking deeper for some details, etc., that might help me figure things out more.

Christy Wright's book might be something for me to put onto my reading list.