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What is the best way to inspire curiosity in a student? Obviously, this is one heck of a difficult question here. Two questions actually. One is a bear to answer, and the other, almost as bad.

The two questions? What is the best way to inspire someone? And what is the best way to inspire curiosity in someone?

So what is the best way to inspire someone? By sharing something similar which has inspired you. For instance, say you are trying to motivate a woman to learn to better manage her finances. Say this woman has failed many times and at this point, she has all but given up. The thing which might inspire her to keep on trying would be for you to share with her something you have master. Ideally something which you once felt like giving up on as well.

Better yet, try to share something which is both related to her struggle and at the same time, something you have mastered. In other words, something you now loving doing. For instance, in this woman's case, you might share how, for many years, you felt unable to manage to track your spending, and how now, you love doing this. To the point wherein you in recent years have been able to save for several very important items. Including your dream car and your son's birth.

And the curiosity part?

Here the basic nature of inspiration includes as part of it some curiosity. However, where inspiration is a generic thing, curiosity is a specific thing. What I mean is, inspiration is like love; we can do it in so many forms. Whereas curiosity is like what you love. You love very specific things.

In a way then, inspiration is like sitting on a high mountain peak calmly taking in the view. Whereas curiosity is like noticing a detail in this view and feeling strong urges to go and personally be near what you see.

Of course, the most basic difference between these two feelings is that inspiration stems from something past, while curiosity stems from something in the future. A desire to revisit a wonderful past event versus a desire to experience a wonderful future event.

This in fact is what makes inspiring curiosity in a person so hard. Because inspiration is based primarily in a past event or events, when you draw on your inspiration to inspire someone else, you draw on something already in existence. A sure thing. Whereas when you try to inspire curiosity in a person, while you may indeed be feeling curious yourself, more times than not, this is not the case. Thus when you try to inspire curiosity in another person, you not only have to try to generate this feeling in them. You also must generate this feeling in yourself.

So how do you inspire curiosity in another? By doing what I just mentioned; by generating it in yourself in the very same moments as you are trying to inspire this other person. Only by doing this can you hope to inspire curiosity in another. Thus, learning to find your own curiosity is one of the main skills in being a teacher.

Steven Paglierani is a writer, teacher, personality theorist, and therapist whose work on learning and human consciousness is read weekly by thousands all over the world. He is the author of Emergence Personality Theory, and his mission is to make the world better for children by restoring and deepening their love of learning.

He can be read or reached at his site, http://theEmergenceSite.com