The Power of Curiosity

[EdanaBrietta]

Firstly, I need to explain that my therapist really likes affirmations (and they're growing on me too). At the end of each session, she chooses a deck of affirmation cards, fans them out, and has me choose one.

A few months ago, she fanned out a set of mindfulness cards and the card I chose encouraged me to approach things with curiosity rather than fear. It suggested that I recognize when I'm fearful and try to change that fear to curiosity and then see how I feel.

I have to say, curiosity is a powerful thing. I didn't practice this intentionally this time, but after tonight I'll be more intentional about it.

I had been worrying about a new education trend (I'm a teacher) called "personalized learning" and how in the world I was expected to implement it on top of everything else I do. I did what I always do and tried to satisfy my masochistic need to obsess about a worry. I researched personalized learning and how to implement it to get some ideas of what might become expected of me in the future. At first, the suggestions were things like "establish a learning plan with each student" and in my head I'm thinking "Yeah, right, how the heck can I do that with 145 students?!". But the more articles I read about personalized learning and how it's been implemented in other locations, the more interested, curious, and even excited I got. I started to think of ways I could do that in my own classroom. Suddenly I noticed that the thing I had been worrying about was now the thing I was excited about. My curiosity had helped me to change my attitude.

I thought I would post this little "break through" in case anyone was interested. I'll be trying to maintain a more curious outlook from now on.