Discovery Mentality

By: Duke Rohe  drohe@att.net

Remember Curious George?  Always into things.  He was just a little monkey checking things out.  And although he got into his fair share of trouble, he sure had fun.  We need to adopt a discovery mentality.  One that is anticipating something around the bend.  One that doesn’t want to miss out on anything.

1. Discovery becomes more aware of those things around it.  What was overlooked is now looked over to get a better view.
2. Discovery is a more of a spirit of the person than an event that happens.  It is a kid-like inquisitiveness that asks “why?” on the inside.
3. Discovery is blame-free.  It is more interested in how someone came up with their rationale than how the rationale was wrong.
4. Discovery leads to learning.  It adds one more experience to our recollection that makes up life.
5. Discovery draws on as much evidence as possible before deriving its conclusion.  For a wrong conclusion wastes the discovery.
6. Discovery seeks understanding.  It wants to comprehend the “how” of the clockwork behind the dial.
7. Discovery doesn’t jump to the most evident answer.  It seeks for truth, not the convenient.
8. Discovery has a divergent; everything is possible, optimist mentality.
9. Discovery usually has an element of fun associated with it.  Fun turns problem solving into a board game.  Fun generates more possibilities than seriousness.
10. Discovery welcomes life and hollers “What am I going to learn from you today?”.
11. Discovery conquers the unknown.  Inhibition loses its power in the face of an all-out assault to the top.
12. Discovery is never finished.  For what fun is it to discover one out of two.
13. Discovery carries its own momentum.  It is its own energy.
14. Discovery will have a greater understanding.  For it was looking for more from the beginning.
15. Discovery has a desire to share its summits.  Why waste learning moments on yourself when there are so many others who haven’t ventured there yet.
16. Discovery is not the same as gullible.  It is gathering new input to create new thinking and determines the validity of each.  It filters out the faulty and accepts the helpful.
17. Discovery can happen anytime.  If the discovery radar is up; anytime is now.
18. Discovery squeezes every bit of useful fact out of the tube.
19. Discovery learns from its own mistakes.  You may make more mistakes; but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Discovery has a pot of gold at the end of its rainbow:  Clarity.  New learning puts you at a different place than you were before.