Cultivating Curiosity in the Age of Tweets and Twitter

Huell Howser, host of "California Gold" is the only person I know that can get pretty excited about broken glass.

Let me explain. Huell travels up and down the state and discovers some of California's unique and eccentric places like lighthouses, Emu farmers and artisans who make things out of broken glass. 

One episode, Huell visited a man who creates "deco art" using recycled glass. I was listening to the conversation with amazement and I got the sense that Huell sincerely cares about this guy and his broken glass. 

Curiosity is hard to develop, especially if the topic is of no interest. I mean how excited can one get about wall paper design? But being curious requires me to really listen and enter another persons world with empathy.

Curiosity softens my "self certainty" about life and increases my ability to see life with a sense of "wonder." So I became "curious" watching Huell work his magic in getting people to open up about what I thought was mundane topics.

I went on to "youtube" and I watched closely how the great interviewers like Huell Howser, Jack Paar, Brian Lamb and Roy Firestone brought a person to life.

I listened to how each of these conversationalist weaved curiosity into the interview. Soon I began to notice something interesting.  Over the course of the conversation, the interviewer took a back seat and I was focused on the other person and their story-I almost forgot the interviewer was in the room.

The interviewers had to be ok with backing down and allowing the other person to come alive. The ego sure can get in the way of being curious, especially in this current age of "self obsession.

Conversation is becoming a lost art in the land of tweets and twitter. It's time bring curiosity back, dust it off and learn "conversation" all over again.

The Power of Self Awareness

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a store window and…WHOA. I was troubled by what I saw-my walk, my weight and my poor fashion choice. Who I thought I was and who I was, didn't match. Something went wrong in the reflection. I experienced a moment of self awareness and didn't like it-but I needed it.

Of course, a reflection only shows the outside and cannot show what's inside. But truth be told, I form a picture of myself on the inside based on my values and the standards of what I think a man my age should be like-I compare myself to others.

The perception is shallow and could be flawed. But if I look deeper into myself, I see what forms my character-the person I really am. Moments of self awareness do not change me from the outside-although a different shirt would have helped. Self awareness examines the deep parts of my character and that is where change and maturity happen.

Self awareness separates "myself" from my "perceived self" and I take an objective look at who I really am. I examine my motives, values and standards that I use to compare myself to others. I soon find out that either my values were out of sync or my perception of me was.

A conflict occurs when the two do not match. That moment I saw the reflection, I knew something was out of sync and self awareness brought me back in sync with my values. Practicing self awareness aligns your perceptions with your values.

I could spend a lot of time wondering how others see me but what is most important and where I begin is "how I see me." My reputation is how others see me but my character defines the real me. When reputation and character come together they form the genuine self. And Self awareness brings me closer to my character.

Abraham Lincoln once said: "Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing." Self awareness follows the shadow to the tree.