What Seems Pointless May Be The Point: Curiosity Leads To Success

I love giving unsolicited advice to my niece and nephew. (That's what aunties are for, right?).

Last week my nephew and I were lounging around in our sweatpants after stuffing ourselves with Thanksgiving turkey, and I asked his thoughts about starting college next year.

He said something about wanting to study Medical Insurance Policy-Making (is that even a major? Snoooooze…) so he could have a secure job lined up.

I couldn't resist weighing in; I urged him to take a wide range of interesting classes, so he could discover what really lights him up.

He rolled his eyes (teenagers, amirite?) and said, “Auntie, it's not like some random class is going to make me successful.”

Wait. Did he even know who he was talking to?! As someone who's built my coaching practice on the concept that you can “follow your bliss” and make money doing it, I pounced.

I told him the story of how in college, Apple founder Steve Jobs started dropping in to random classes, just to learn for the sake of learning.

His school had the top Calligraphy course in the country, so Jobs spent time carefully learning the craft, appreciating the history and significance of various fonts, and understanding the impact of aesthetically-pleasing text.

Later, at Apple, this learning came full-circle. Steve Jobs realized that visual design and the appearance of text mattered.

Jobs made sure that the McIntosh computer would have clean, well-spaced text and a variety of fonts available. (To keep up with Apple, Microsoft also embraced the same valuing of aesthetics and design).

If Steve Jobs hadn't followed his curiosity and taken a calligraphy class, we'd all be looking at a whole lot of ugly on our devices.

Plus, Jobs would have missed out on one of the defining features that made Apple stand out (and thus made him a gazillionaire).

I think this example may have landed with my nephew, since like many teens, he spends about 90% of his time staring at his iPhone.

I stopped short of lecturing him on the countless examples of other influential geniuses throughout history who've been polymaths, people who bring curiosity and to multiple areas of knowledge and craft.

But I'll condense the point of that lecture into one idea for you:

There's great value in following your curiosity and intuition.

“Follow your bliss” isn't just an idea for dreamers and woo-woo types. It may just be the key to your success. It certainly will increase the quality of your life in general.

Can you think of a time that letting your curiosity lead the way has led to something great?

Is there something tugging at you that you want to pursue? It could be a painting class, a course on the history or architecture, a storytelling workshop… anything. It may just be the key to your success. You never know. I'm, ahem, curious to hear about it.