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I recently came across the following list written/compiled by David Heenan: Ten Keys to Life Fulfillment: 1. Listen to your heart 2. Take one step at a time 3. Deliver daily 4. Maintain a maverick mind-set 5. Focus, focus, focus 6. Never stop learning 7. Build a brain trust (network of knowledgeable people) 8. Reinvent Yourself 9. Sell Yourself 10. Start now!

This list rocks!!! I love it. It’s balanced and passionate and practical and focused and full of hope.

These are all things I strive to deliver to my students and clients.

My belief is that we can have it all. We can have satisfying work that pays us really, really well. We can continue to grow and learn (at any point in our lives and careers).

I would add to the above list the concept of ‘cultivating curiosity’.

A lot of people struggle with stagnation later on in their careers. The edge just isn’t there anymore and there’s nothing really spurring continued advancement and growth. Lately I’ve heard from a number of my students that this is an issue in the financial services field. Many of the contemporaries of my students, as they approach retirement age, begin to find their hunger for achievement on the wane. I can’t ever see myself truly retiring. A big part of wanting to continue my work in persuasion is that I have a constant curiosity about what can be improved.

Children have an innate curiosity. When we’re new to the world we have a curiosity about absolutely everything. Why is the moon following us? Why is the sky blue? Who invented ice cream? How do birds fly? Then we become inundated by school and maybe we become overwhelmed by all that there is in the world and a lot of times, that curiosity wanes. Who has time to figure it all out?

Curiosity is a desire to understand, know and learn about other people and things outside of ourselves (which is really key in gaining rapport with our clients and prospects). I have definitely had times in life when I had no interest in what was going on in the world around me. I’m in no way suggestion that having periods of introspection is not valuable, but our culture seems to nurture navel gazing, that ‘me, me, me’ attitude, with a bent toward pathologizing and psychologizing ourselves to an extreme.

When we turn our attention outward and open up to the possibilities of what is around us, there is incredible power particularly where persuasion is concerned. Our goal is to persuade our affluent clientle, and when we understand how other people think through keeping our minds and eyes open, and we combine it with what we have to offer, then we have the key to their criteria.

Pay attention to the details. When you’re curious, you can turn the mundane into an opportunity to learn something.

Tags: NLP

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