Tracking Wonder

How to cultivate this elusive emotion

by Jeffrey Davis, M.A.

From Fear Toward Creative Mastery

When starting a new creative endeavor, fear of the unknown can override all joyful anticipation. But taking concrete stock of those fears and converting them into pursuit of mastery goals can revive your enthusiasm, help you avoid delusion, and lead to gratification. Read More

Why the "Why" Matters in Exercise & Creativity

Exercise bores you. You'd rather spend your time working on ideas or projects than be at a gym. But you also know you need it. Maybe what will get you into yoga pants or power walking shoes is a meaningful motivation - and maybe the fact that moving your body benefits your creativity. Read More

3 More Observations About Wonder-Centered Schools & Colleges

Granted, it will take more than Superman to make a difference in our schools and colleges. But the mounting national dialogue on creativity and education suggests we might be primed to do just that. Are we? If so, we'll have to address culture, colleges, and even good ol' uncertainty. Read More

An Ideasicle Interview: Tracking the Environmental Mind, the Creative Yogi, and More

Ideasicle founder and advertising smart-guy Will Burns talks with Jeffrey Davis about the biological impulse to create, how serendipity and environment stimulate innovative ideas, how harnessed breathing directly affects the creative unconscious, & more. Read More

Radical Ways to Renovate a House of Fear

Fear and doubt can take over our bodies like obnoxious house guests whom, after a few years, we've unintentionally allowed to move in for the long haul. Here are five ways to start rebuilding your creative house from the foundation. Read More

Answers to Creatives Problems Aren't Within - They're Outside

It's Earth Day, and chances are you'll spend hours in front of a digital device and only minutes outdoors. Why would entrepreneurs, creatives & business people need to take a hike or plant a tree to hone their edge? Spending time outdoors could be a key way to expand your creative process - and optimize your creative mind. Read More

Crafting a Creative Life Is a Challenge

Crafting an authentic, creative life is challenging. But that is just what you choose to do - you who refuse to make a cookie-cutter family or live in a predictable relationship or function like an automaton at your job or spend your weekends doing default mass-non-think activities. You choose to craft this one wild life. Read More

Surprise! Shock Yourself into Creating Memorable Art & Good Word-of-Mouth

Being open to delightful surprise. Every. Single. Day. That's a practice worth my time. And worth yours if you're an artist, designer, writer, advertising genius, or anyone who has an audience, tribe, or clients. Read More

Meaning, Magic, and the Wonder of Everyday Life: The Tracking Wonder Interview

Curious about just what 'tracking wonder' means? How to practice it? Why you'd want to? Portland Helmich, of Kripalu Perspectives, interviewed me recently on just these very questions and more. Read More

Fertilize Confusion to Thrive During Creative & Life Challenges

Many people flinch at uncertainty, bristle at not-knowing, flee from confusion. But confusion can be converted into creative innovation and personal break-through.

Why would one of the nation's top-notch creativity teams (paid around $200,000 a day for some sessions) stretch before brainstorming? How does engaging the body stimulate creative innovation? The sciences are affirming some ancient wisdom about the embodied mind & embodied imagination.

I often write information-laden articles. But numerous psychology studies would support my saying we often need to welcome a space of not-knowing. "A disposition to wonder," that perpetual questioner Socrates reminds us, "is the beginning of all wisdom." Why? Because not being a know-it-all is the beginning of true knowing.

The most innovative people I interview regard each day a certain way. An opportunity. A window. A portal. A day can be more than a list of tasks to check off. I'm convinced each day is a collective poem begging to be shaped and written by each of us. How are you going to experience your days this year?

I'm a cheerleader for creative action. Getting things done. Making ideas happen. But I want meaningful things done. And I want to make ideas happen with right intention. Right intention with right action can make for a doubly powerful creative life in 2011.

For most of us motivated by meaning more than money, we must get to the core to keep our business's heart beat thumping through good times and bad.

One oft-forgotten tool, inherent to your creativity, can help you get to your professional heart and envision your professional year accordingly: imagination.

As we head toward the year's end and find ourselves in the season of gift-giving, it might be insightful to reflect on gratitude. In this imaginary round table discussion culled from e-interviews, four creatives reflect upon gratitude, authenticity, and entrepreneurship. Read More

Three Acts to Make 2011 a Wonder Year

Okay, I know you might want to let wonder roam on its own, untethered by too much will or intention and, for crying out loud, goal-setting for the new year. But will works if coaxed the right way. Reflect, anticipate, and just be - these three acts and some accompanying resources can show you how wonder and will can play together. Read More

An In-House Retreat Can Refresh the Creative Mind

The creative mind savors uninterrupted time to wander, roam, hone great ideas into creative action. But who has that time? Or space? An in-house retreat of 4 hours or 48 hours might be just what you need before the holiday frenzy begins. Read More

Flipping the Wonder Switch for Activism

Do you want to live for a cause larger than yourself? Heed what stops you in your tracks with mysterious delight, puzzling joy, and an unnamed sense that something else that is at once part of you and greater than you is worth fighting for. Read More

Balance is Out. Obsession is In.

How can we indulge our obsessions without them consuming us? In his new book Brainstorm: Harnessing the Power of Productive Obsessions, psychotherapist Eric Maisel and Ann Maisel suggests we "forget life balance" in favor of "productive obsessions." Read More

Think Like a 47-Year-Old to Boost Your Creativity

Ask 10 adults to offer an example of a wondrous person, and I'd wage that 9 of them would point to a child. Children have their own version of wonder, but so do adults. In fact, many adults have the capacity for a richer form of wonder than do most children. Read More

How to Be Idle and Blessed

The Virginia coast sun wilts the air here in Cape Charles, and everything - the tongue, the mind, the pace - slows down. My wife, baby daughter, and I are vacationing although the industrious American in me wants to claim I'm researching wonder. How might we quiet the mind with delight, pleasure, and joy in the name of (gulp) productive idleness? Here are some tips taken from the shores of Cape Charles.

You could wake up one morning in the middle of your house in the middle of your life and say, "This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife. How did I get here?" and realize you're a cockroach - a sort of Inferno-meets-Talking Heads-meets-Kafka moment. In other words, you could realize you no longer are sure who you are, how you belong, or where you're going. How do you respond? How can you switch from fear to wonder, from awfulness to awesomeness in confusing times? Read More

Wonder-Talk: How to Open Up Instead of Size Up

Wonder appears easily among aspen groves and waterfalls, but enter a social situation, and you might call out, Wonder, O Wonder, where did thou go? When talking with other people, I used to ball up and struggle to listen. Later, once confident, I became obnoxious as if my mother had taught me no Southern graces. In both cases, my mind was busy, my heart closed, and my spirit depleted. Read More

Man Vacuuming: How Chores Can be Less of a Chore

My wife cooks and launders; I clean. A happy division of labor for a few years. But recently I've noticed a lot of clanging and banging when I sweep and vacuum. The noise in my head seems to influence the way the sucking nozzle slams against any surface it can find. So this morning while cleaning I decided to try to track wonder and see what happens. Read More

Wonder Eyes: 5 Ways To See Things More Vividly Than Avatar.

Maybe our appetite for 3-D films like Avatar relate to our hunger for wonder, specifically to a desire for a physical world whose objects pulse with electric hues where "reality" and magic merge. Here's what I'm wondering: Maybe we already live there. This world of lamps, dishwashers, and envelopes could afford us daily opportunities to track wonder. Read More

Wonder is Not Kid's Stuff

I won't valorize my cooing, gazing eight-month-old daughter as the exemplar of wonder. That would be too easy. And it may not be accurate. It certainly would not be constructive to encourage responsible adults to mimic the habits of a doe-eyed infant. In fact, I'll just come out and say it: Wonder is not kid's stuff. It turns out that it might be rather adult stuff. Read More

Jeffrey Davis is a creativity consultant and author of The Journey from the Center to the Page: Yoga Philosophies and Practices as Muse for Authentic Writing.

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About Tracking Wonder

Wonder eludes being pinned down and evades our recognizing that we're in its midst. Yet, based on this middle-aged writer's experiences, research, and explorations, wonder may turn out to be the most important emotional experience for us adults to cultivate. Especially if we're in creative fields and have problems with motivation, novelty, follow-through, collaboration, or project completion. Wonder - like happiness and compassion - can be practiced and re-invited into our work and personal lives. This blog aims to share solid ideas related to just that. See you in the woods.