Good Life Project - Jeffrey Davis | A Wonder-Full Life

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

What if you could work, play, and live in a state of wonder? Even now! That’s the question I explore with today’s guest, Jeffrey Davis. A poet, writer, deep-thinker, founder and CEO of the Tracking Wonder Consultancy, Jeffrey’s got an invitation for all of us. To get off the toxic productivity treadmill, which so many have been hammered by in recent times, and reclaim a sense of possibility, meaning, and wonder. To step back into a place of curiosity and lightness. And, when Jeffrey offers that invitation, it’s not just a naive suggestion to rediscover your inner child, but rather a quest to bring wonder back into your life, based on more than 15 years of research, experimentation, and application. Along the way, Jeffrey has developed a powerful, proven, step-by-step methodology to begin bringing wonder back into your work, relationships, devotions, and life. He shares this in his gorgeous new book, Tracking Wonder, and we dive into key ideas and explorations in today’s conversation.You can find Jeffrey at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the conversations we had with iconic author, Anne Lamott, about opening to all life brings your way.My new book Sparked.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Not only is wonder valuable, it's our birthright and potentially, according to evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, and psychologists, possibly part of our evolutionary advantage for how we have thrived over the millennia. When we make this a part of our daily morning practice, right, just to up the wonder ratio, it really can shift the lens on everything. Hey, so what if you could work, play, and live in a state of wonder? Yes, even now. That's the question that I explore with today's guest, Jeffrey Davis, a poet, writer, deep thinker, founder, and CEO of the Tracking Wonder Consultancy. Jeffrey's got this invitation for all of us to get off the toxic productivity treadmill, which so many of us have been hammered by in recent times, and reclaim a sense of possibility and meaning and wonder to step back into a place of curiosity and lightness. And when Jeffrey offers that invitation, by the way, it's not just this naive suggestion to rediscover your inner

child, but rather a quest to bring wonder back into your life based on more than 15 years of research, experimentation, and application. And along the way, Jeffrey has developed this really powerful, proven step-by-step methodology to begin to bring wonder back into your work, your relationships, your devotions, and your life. And he shares this in his gorgeous new book, Tracking Wonder. And we dive into the key ideas and explorations in today's conversation. So excited to share it with you. And a quick note before we dive in.

So at the end of every episode, I don't know if you've ever heard this, but we actually recommend a similar episode. I don't know if you've ever heard this, but we actually recommend a similar episode. So if you love this episode, at the end, we're going to share another one that we're pretty sure you're going to love too. So be sure to listen for that. Okay. On to today's conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight risk. All right. So we're going to dive in here. Jeffrey Davis, we've known each other for quite some time now. I want to say a decade, maybe. I don't remember exactly when and where, but it's been a minute. It's been fun for me because I've been sort of like watching you building a company and doing all this really incredible work around the topic of wonder for years now. And you have this fabulous new book, Tracking Wonder, which tracks with all of the other stuff you've been doing.

And I want to dive into a lot of the ideas in it because they're really powerful. And as a sort of a student of wonder and all myself, I'm just super curious about all of it. But I'm curious about you. And I know you grew up as a kid who seemed to really create your own worlds from the earliest days and express them in your own ways. And I'm wondering, when you think about your experience of wonder in the earlier parts of your life, do you have early memories of sort of like stepping into that space? I do. And I think about that boy almost every day. And I talk with my mother for a good while every Sunday who reminds

me somewhat of that space. I have so many. I remember being nine or 10 years old. My wife, Hillary claims that every good memory is like when I'm nine or 10 years old. I don't know if that's true, but it was around that time that I was trying to track my earliest memories as a boy because I was like, oh, I've led a long life. What was my earliest memory? And they were all related to being in kind of a waking dream state, waking up in my bed, maybe four years old and seeing flying sea tortoises, you know, sea tortoises flying over my head and waking up and seeing a grizzly bear on one side of the bed and looking over and

seeing Hallmark greeting cards on the other side. And I thought, oh, I'll just look at the Hallmark greeting cards and hope the bear goes away. Very early memories of that and very early memories of being in the woods where we lived, which turns out to be just an undeveloped lot that was given, we kids had free reign to and constant exploring in the woods quite often by myself, as you said, making up worlds as well, creating my own pathways. And then also there was a period like second grade, particularly, I was home sick a lot with stomach aches. And it turns out my math teacher was kind of the source of that. But those were some wonderful days of actually being at home in bed with my drawing pads,

creating full animated stories of serial characters, not serial killers, but serial characters in these series. So yeah, I have lots of memories related now to what I would call wonder, even though I didn't have the language at all for it then. Yeah. It's fascinating because I know you as somebody who has been possessed by language and words from, you know, like I remember hearing stories and you're like, and I know that you have been deep into the world of poetry for, for decades of your life. And in part, you know, because it's a form of expression, but also because it gives you access to certain states. So we've used this word wonder, but I think it makes sense for us, like a really good starting point is what are we actually talking about when we're talking about wonder?

Yeah, that's good. Maybe I'll connect some dots to my life and pursuing poetry as a way of kind of waking myself up to the world around me. So in the simplest terms, I define wonder as a state of heightened awareness that's brought about by something unexpected, something surprising that either delights us or disorients us or both. It could be what happened last week when I was in a video conference with a prospect and suddenly out the window, literally this huge bird came flopping out of a tree, landed on a little log right on the side of our pond. And I looked, I thought it was a heron. It turned out to be a bald eagle, just like yards away. It can be that sort of delightful and disorienting and puzzling.

It can also be something deeper, like what many of us have experienced in the past year and a half, where our sense of what's real and true gets completely disrupted. And we're a little bewildered or a lot bewildered. Those are also potential states of wonder. So yes, my decision in college to go a little left while my friends were going into business and pre-law, marketing, accounting, I thought I was going to major in business. And then I went left into the humanities and went further left into poetry and poetics. And my friends were like, what are you going to do with that? So it really was for me a pursuit of meaning. That word was very notable in my awareness in my notebooks at the time. And I really deliberately wanted to open my eyes and my senses to the

world around me and to the people around me. I'm very much into language, but also can be very much in my head and I can miss what's right around me. So again, I didn't have the language of wonder at the time, but it really was a deliberate way to, I would say, find the craft to help me experience, maybe foster wonder, even though I didn't know that's what I was doing at the time. Could I actually read a poem to illustrate something that might help people as well? Because wonder can seem sort of fleeting or just completely irrelevant or inaccessible. And I was just thinking about this poem the other day. And so I had it nearby just in case it seemed relevant. So when our first daughter was born, Dahlia, she was probably seven months old or so. It was around

the Christmas holidays. And we were, Hillary, my wife, and I and Dahlia were in the living room. And there was near our cast iron stove, a vase of winter berries and Hillary's holding Dahlia and Dahlia's infant eyes are just wide gazing at these winter berries. And Hillary is gazing at Dahlia, gazing at the winter berries. And I'm just taking in this beautiful moment. So I just want to read this poem because it just might feel like to our listeners how accessible wonder is. So it's called A Series of Small Wonders. Three-vased twigs of winter berry startle space that surrounds the farm table. The ember-hued pellets relished in her infant pebble pupils. As your matronly arms secure her dazzle and squirm, your mouth owed by her awe, and the berries astonished by their own glow. Sometimes it is enough to cradle cracks of light from the woodstove And from that tiny opening that quakes, all of it new again and again.

As I'm reading that to you, I realized that was kind of like a personal manifesto. Like sometimes it's enough just to capture those moments. So beautiful. And so it really does illustrate sort of like this thing. And also it illustrates how you don't necessarily need to go in search of these big moments or big experiences or big things like that. This state is so accessible to us in everyday moments all around us all day, every day. Why wonder for you? I mean, I understand as a kid,

we're all like, we love to drop into that space. And I understand that it is a place of amazement and a place of possibility. When you step into adulthood then, and then you devote yourself to poetry and then to language, and then you start to move even more into adulthood. At some point, you make a decision and say, understanding what this state is, translating it, getting to the nuggets, the essence of it, and then inviting more into my life, but also literally building my career around helping others understand what this place is and step into it and live in it and create from it and build from it, that becomes your central professional devotion. Why? How does that actually switch get flipped? It's a beautiful question. And you're right. You

hit on a pivotal word that I, as part of my morning practice of devotion, and it started off personal, a sort of inspiration to pursue the sort of next thing that was probably in 2004 while researching for another project. I thought, oh, I really want to commit the next couple of years to really trying to understand what this experience of wonder is. And I even created a really bad book proposal at the time that was just like everything I thought I already knew about wonder, which was completely counter to the whole proposition. So I did this sort of the intellectual move, which was like, okay, I'm going to reference at least 250 citations

just to get me out of my conventional way of thinking and test some of my assumptions, interview some psychologists. And this is in 2004, and the science of wonder was not very strong. The science of awe, as you know, was emerging a bit. And I spoke with Dr. Keltner and some others in those early days. So it became intellectual. I was obsessive just out of my intellectual curiosity to pursue wonder in all of the possible ways I could find from examining Joseph Campbell's hero's journey through the lens of wonder to looking at wisdom traditions, poets and so forth. But it was really a few years later under a series of a lot of adversity that just came

within a matter of months that really refined a new sort of grounded, I would say, reality of wonder. In 2004, 2005, Hilary and I were dating and I was telling her about this project. And she was one who actually, because she has actually training in tracking animals, just out of curiosity with animals, she's like, oh, it sounds like you're tracking wonder. And like, it's stuck ever since. So a few years later, we get married. We buy our sort of dream house in the Hudson Valley, this farmhouse. And we're like, okay, first stable relationship in our lives, first foundation under our feet. We could build our dreams. We can build our businesses. Maybe we'll have a couple of wonderlings wandering the woods someday. It has my version of Walden Woods and pond out back. And within less than a year of getting married, we had two miscarriages that spring. I contracted Lyme disease for the first time, which would turn out to be quite a few times actually. And for those listeners who don't know by now, Lyme disease can be, it's a tick-borne disease. It can be very debilitating

physiologically, neurologically, completely did a number on my digestive system. And just, I felt like I was going 70 miles per hour in second gear all day, just like barely holding onto any stamina or energy. Just as soon as I thought I got through that first round of Lyme, destroyed about 300 volumes of books, 20 years of archives, melted my laptop before I had any sensibility about the cloud, and really would ultimately gut our whole farmhouse. We'd be out of the house for maybe 15 months during renovation. We were grateful, of course. We weren't there by some chance. So we both survived. Our old cat at the time was rescued by a neighbor. But I was really confused, angry, but not sure what I was angry at.

Wanted to cry, but wasn't quite sure what I was crying about. And I went back the next day and just kind of looking at the decimation and looking at the charred bookshelves. And there had been holes that the firefighters had knocked in the walls and ceiling to let the flames escape. And so I'm just looking at like sort of the ruins of our dreams, so to speak. And out of the corner of my eye, there's just this pulsing, this colorful pulsing that turned out to be this monarch that had flown in through one of the holes. And for just a moment, everything paused, like everything in my nervous system slowed down. All of whatever armor just fell away.

And I felt open just for a fleeting moment and, you know, just knew in that moment that everything would be okay. Ultimately, it was just enough to get me through some of the next 15 months. That got me really curious though, which is what happens. I got really curious, both about my own experience and about the experience of others. And that set me on a course, not only of research, but of really testing out some things in our community, with our clients, about the relationship of wonder to our experiences of challenge, change, and adversity. And that set me on a course, really very deliberate course, both of research and of testing things out and looking at what I call fulfilled innovators, people who have really contributed in their fields and industries in different ways, but who also describe themselves or seem to have a life they would say is fulfilled.

They haven't burnt out along the way or burned bridges along the way. So I set off with kind of a hypothesis. Again, the science of wonder wasn't very abundant, but I kept making the connections and seeing if there are some possible links and connections. And it turns out there is. And the science of wonder increasingly corroborates that these experiences not only give us resilience to endure adversity and pursue our dreams amidst challenges, they also have remarkable physiological benefits. They pause the fight or flight response amidst surprise or change. They pause that fight or flight response, can put us in a state of what I call instant

mindfulness to the present. And all of our defenses dissolve for a moment. Our biased ways of seeing reality dissolve for a moment. Ourselves can actually replenish in these experiences. wonder now has just really assumed a heightened state of importance for me and for others, particularly in the past year and a half, but even before, that there are profound benefits for our mental health, our physical health, our resilience, and our connection to one another. And I think it's that latter piece, I think, that's been the most surprising part of this body of research. And especially now, I know you that's been the most surprising part of this body of research.

And especially now. I know you've been doing this work for a lot of years now, but yeah, the last couple of years where we have felt increasingly isolated from each other and literally physically had to be in so many circumstances and continue to be in certain circumstances. And also feeling that we are perpetually living in a state of groundlessness, uncertainty, where the stakes are often extraordinarily high. And I feel like we're grasping for a way to feel okay. And I wonder what wonder has to do with that, especially really in this moment in time. I think so many people are trying to figure out, okay, you know, really in this moment in time, you know, I think so many people are trying to figure out, okay, there's a lot I can't control right now. You know, there's a lot

of, there are fleeting moments where I feel the ground under my feet, and then there are a whole lot where I don't. And, you know, if you go that to the classical, you know, serenity prayer, you know, trying to figure out like, like, what can I control? What can I not control? And how can I find peace with both? I think we're in that space perpetually, but we're really ill-equipped to understand how to be able to breathe again in the context of things we cannot control that feel really big. And does wonder give us some level of access to grace in moments like this yes and i want to condition it by just acknowledging how much uncertainty of course i still live in so and particularly i think for you and and for me we both can't help

but also look at the big picture. And we have conversations with so many different people that it is when I try to take stock of and feel the greater picture, whether it's of this country in the United States or the globe at large or human species, that I can really start to feel very groundless. But it's also what drives me to get up every morning. My devotion these days, every morning, I write down, I'm devoted to elevating the ways we work and relate for the greater good. And so to your question, without bypassing any of the suffering that we experience, without bypassing the reality of pain, it turns out that what I call the six facets of wonder are profoundly beneficial to grounding us amidst this time of bewilderment. And so we can talk about some of

those practices or those facets that might be relevant, if that would be useful. Yeah. I mean, I think it'd be super valuable to walk through the six facets. Let's explore them a little bit and maybe talk about some of the tools that are related to them. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight risk. This wasn't immediately clear to me when I set off on this deliberate path over 15 years ago that Wonder might have several facets. But it was becoming clear. And I was like, are these faces of wonder? What are these? There are different types of wonder. And there are certain emotional experiences that are closely kin to wonder that wonder gives rise to. So I would describe them in the six facets in three pairs. And the first pair are openness and curiosity. Openness is what I call the wide sky facet. It is this radical openness to possibility.

It's where we might really reclaim our intelligent naivete toward what's possible. It's where we reclaim maybe our pragmatic idealism. We're sort of refusing cynicism and saying, you know what, things can be better, or I've got this idea, like, could it be possible? And so you foster, again, the sort of radical openness and granted a sort of intelligent naivete that things could be better. Coupled with that is curiosity. Curiosity is really important these days in tandem with openness and wonder. Curiosity is the more playful, proactive, experimental kin to wonder. So wonder physiologically doesn't draw us toward the stimulus and nor does it repel us. So love will draw us toward the stimulus. Fear will repel us.

Wonder pauses that response and just holds us in this beautiful receptivity. And sometimes we can take stock of what's really real, what's really important. It gives rise to curiosity. And so curiosity wants to go out and explore things, gain new knowledge, question the status quo, which is really important right now. Questions, how we work and how we've been working. Questions, how we relate, how we have been relating. Questions are assumptions about one another, and even ourselves. So those two are really important, openness and curiosity, to approaching our lives these days more creatively than reactively. It doesn't mean

that we're not going to react. We're in part wired for that reaction to surprise and change when things don't go as planned. But we can up the ratio and learn, sort of retrain ourselves to respond more creatively than reactively. So I want to talk about those a little bit. Yeah, let's dive in. When I hear the word openness, my mind immediately goes to the classic big five psychological traits. And in that context, openness, the traits in general are largely seen as, you know, they're described as traits rather than states, you know, like, and the inference

there is that kind of, it is what it is. It's not necessarily something that is changeable or trainable over time. We sort of, you know, like different people have a different blend of these five different traits and they tend to show up in a fairly stable way over a person's life. Now, I may psychologist whom you know as well, about this very thing too. There is a spectrum, right? To the degree to which we are open to new experiences is what you're referencing. And openness to new experience is one of what psychologists call the sort of big five that they've looked at for a long time. And so there may be a spectrum of just like how open to new experiences you are.

I tend to be high on that spectrum. And there's some assessments you can take to see how open to new experiences you are. But just as let's say when I was in college at UT Austin and I was taking courses in psychology, it was also believed at that time that our intellect, our IQ was fixed and our brain cell replication was fixed and so forth. We now know that there's a spectrum, like sure, maybe I'm a little higher, a little lower on the IQ level, but I can actually do some things to increase that. And it turns out to be true with openness to new experience, right? We can up the ratio of our tolerance for openness to new experience. Yeah. That's interesting. And I love that because I think even that single facet alone can add so much to a person's life rather than being rattled constantly by newness, you know, if you can up your tolerance and then maybe even

your openness to openness, it literally opens so much more of the world to you. It really does. And you can even take an inventory of yourself, of just tracking during the day, how you respond to things when they don't go your way or how you react and just take a neutral observatory sort of from the perspective of an amused observer of your own behavior to see how quickly you can close down when things don't go your way. And then take an inventory of how many new things do you try during the day? I am a creature of rhythm and routine. It really does help me flourish, but I also actively try to shake up my morning routines or my afternoon default patterns. And so we can do that. We can up the openness ratio by just tracking what our default patterns

are during the day and trying something a little new or read a magazine or a book in a field that you would never normally do so. Have a conversation with somebody you would normally never have a conversation with. Love that. So the other part of that pairing you mentioned is curiosity. And a big part of that is questioning the status quo. And you share a story, Christian Fragassi and Alessandro Romali. Did I pronounce that right? Yes. Can you share that? Because I think it's a fascinating sort of like example of what you're talking about. Sure. Yeah. It's an incredible story. So they're Italian and they live in a small village where the pandemic broke out in their village.

As we know, it really did start to break out quite significantly in Italy in early 2020. And doctors were needing these valves to help people with their respirators in their hospitals. And there was just a small tiny piece that needed to be developed and manufactured and they didn't have access to these parts in this village. So Christian and his partner have this like 3D printing company and they were used to like printing,

you know, objects related to surfing and like nothing related to medicine. But they got curious and took on the experiment and they created these tiny valve pieces. The first one, like with bated breath, it worked. They couldn't believe it worked. And then the doctors say, can you create a hundred more? And I'm like, okay, let's do it. So they did it. And of course, free of charge. And then they open sourced the blueprints for it and shared the blueprints for it around the world and saying, you know,

this is yours. And so the massive financial support from major companies, from universities started pouring in. So when I interviewed Christian and I was just asking him, how did that feel at every stage? How did you deal with your fear at that moment? He said, well, we kind of tricked ourselves into just like, let's not, we don't have time to be afraid right now. Like, let's just assume that it's going to work and let's test it out.

So I said, how did it feel when it worked? You're sharing all the support comes in. He said, you know, it just felt like the world is so big. It's so full of love. It completely shifted his whole outlook on reality. I asked him what he was like as a boy, sort of like you asked me to. He said, I'm constantly curious. My dad was always fixing things. I was right there trying to figure out how things were, trying to take things apart. I was really the annoying questioner to my grandmother. I was always asking questions. Why, why, why does mom have to work? Why does dad have, why, why, why? So yeah, it's a great illustration of curiosity at work. I love that. I want to touch on something on curiosity that I've really recently discovered that I think is really germane to our times and to our listeners. So neurologically, neurochemically, dopamine is released when we're curious. And dopamine is this amazing motivator for us to keep pursuing ideas or life when it gets hard, when it gets confusing.

So that's beautiful. But what I've recently come across are some studies that are speculating on why there have been such increases in depression and anxiety in the past year and a half, if not before. And it turns out that excessive screen time, excessive screen time, and sort of like scrolling social media feeds or the internet or YouTube videos releases excessive amounts of dopamine. And when we don't have time, when our brains don't have time to remodulate back to normal without the overstimulation, it can lead to depression and anxiety. So I mentioned this in part because many of us, myself included, could sort of default our curiosity. That is, we could get curious just by default, whatever stimulus is being brought our way, and that can be really depleting.

So in order to track wonder with curiosity, it's really important for each of us to take the quiet time to take stock of what is it you are really curious about and what do you really care about that will help you then pursue those questions that really light you up and help you discern like all of the other distractions. Like one of my clients, he said, I don't have attention deficit disorder. I have attention abundance disorder. And the same is true for me. And it may be for you as well, Jonathan.

We're both very curious people and we could spread our attention too thinly, which can lead to excessive worry or deflated spirits. Yeah, that's so interesting. The relationship between screen time releasing that same chemical. I almost wonder as you're describing that is, I read research on people in the military returning from being in theater and how when you are in a very, very high alert, high vigilance and dangerous sustained state for a long time, your brain literally learns to function with an extraordinary high level of these chemicals circulating through it. And that becomes the new set point, the new normal. And then when you return to civilian life, which it does not generate that, the brain expects that just to sustain baseline okay. And when it doesn't get it, that is one of the things that tends to plummet people into a dark space. And what you're describing sounds similar in interesting ways to that. But it's like we're literally creating that environment by just being on screens all the time. Yes, that's right. I don't know that research,

but there must be a correlation. And I just want to wonder aloud with you too, about what we have experienced collectively and globally with our pace of work and our work ethic. So I'm wondering if like the rapid pace, constantly go, go, go, hustle, hustle, hustle, work, work, work. And suddenly that's disrupted. And then we're like left scrambling, like wondering like, Oh, now what? Or like, gosh, can I be bored? Well, can I do nothing? What could I do less? Well, like it's really an uncomfortable place to be. So I'm just sort of wondering aloud with you about what the psychological neurological relations might be. Yeah, I have no doubt that there will be a lot of research done on this season of humanity

and a lot of those questions are going to get answered. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required.

Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. Let's jump to the second couplet. So we're talking about the six facets of wonder.

You described openness and curiosity in the relationship. Tell me about the next pairing. Yeah, the next pairing are bewilderment and hope. Bewilderment I describe as the deep woods facet because it is a state that we can feel at different stages in our lives. Some of us can experience it on an ongoing basis when let's say just creatively, professionally, you're pursuing an idea, an endeavor, a project or dream that means a lot to you. And then suddenly you get to the space where you're like, oh my gosh, I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know if I'm going to get through this at all. Like, what was I thinking? It's a potential state of bewilderment if you can

sort of foster the state of sort of creative mindfulness of wonder. But it also can come, and I've seen this happen in tandem, it also can come when our sense of who we are, our sense of identity is called into question. And I've always sort of questioned since I was in my 20s, the framing of identity crisis, which was a term taken from a very small population of people, I understand, from one study, because I think I've been having those since I was in my late 20s, like questioning, who am I? What am I doing? But that can be an opportunity to do what I call is like fertilize the confusion. Like, can we make this an opportunity for the stage of whether it's identity evolution or project evolution to be really creative and like, let's navigate this uncertainty. Hope is what I call the rainbow facet. And that metaphor comes in part from the science of Shane Lopez, who was really prominent in really taking hope seriously. Hope is very proactive. It's not wishful thinking. Like I kind of thought it was several years ago before I really dove deep into the science. It's proactive. It's the small steps

we can take and the people we surround ourselves with and the actions and even the daydreaming we can do to get us closer to a better near future. So these two facets are essential, it turns out, in giving us maybe the perseverance with more grace than grit, as you referenced grace earlier, the resilience without hardening up along the way, without burning out. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting.

When I hear the word, I have reactions to both the words bewilderment and hope and their different reactions. When I think of bewilderment immediately, I have a negative association with it. And maybe that's just been the cultural frame. So I'm trying to figure out like, why do I, why does something raise inside of me that says I don't necessarily want that? And I feel like a lot of it is tied to a sense of disorientation, which can be extraordinary, right? Because if it's something that reorients you or it disrupts your orientation around something,

which maybe is no longer serving you, that's not necessarily a bad thing. But in that moment of bewilderment, we're like, I don't know who I am, what I'm doing, where things are going. It's a profoundly uncomfortable place to be. And I think that's my sense is that's why I immediately like my default reaction to the word is not so sure I want that. Talk to me about this. Cause I'm guessing I'm not alone. Oh, you're not alone. Of course. No, no. And my editor and I are like, we kept like, well, you know, is this the right word? Like, will people have this adverse response? And I really wanted to keep it for a variety of reasons. I mean, one is yes, being the word nerd, I liked the implication of be wilder, you know, the state of to be wilder, to move into what's

uncomfortable. I find it beautiful that you admit, the author of Uncertainty, admitting that this makes you uncomfortable because it makes me uncomfortable too. And everything I write is just trying to, it's all because I'm dealing with my own stuff. I am in it with everybody else. Completely. Me too. So much so. So I do have a high tolerance for ambiguity and certain cognitive uncertainty, but if things don't go right in life, I can react. And so sure, I also dove into this research in part for myself and my family and the people I work with. So yeah. So let's think about bewilderment in these

terms and see if this helps. So the Sufi poet Rumi once wrote, sell cleverness by bewilderment. Now, why would somebody who's sort of the mystic wisdom tradition suggest that? because of course he's provoking us to let down our guards of thinking we know so much when we really strip away what we don't know like every time i for instance okay this is such a banal example but i think it's every time i go to fill up my car with gasoline, I'm looking at that, you know, the gas pump. I'm like, I have no idea how this works. Like, I have no idea where the gas is going. I have no idea how they measure.

Like, is it accurate? Like, how are they really doing that? There is so much in this world that genuinely bewilders me. And can I be okay with that? To certain degrees, yes. Can I actually foster a sort of not only okayness, but actually moving into the deep woods of my life with more, again, bringing the curiosity forward with more creativity? Can I bring others in with me as well so that I can really stay in this?

Because maybe something on the other side of the deep woods is better. It's like really where I'm going. Another maybe reference for all the listeners that perhaps they can appreciate is a children's literature from the film version of The Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy gets transported, she's like, oh, you want to go over the rainbow? Great. Let's have your tornado moment and take you across the threshold into the land of Oz. She's completely bewildered when she lands there. She's not in Kansas anymore. She's not in the world she thought she was. You see the similar things in Alice in Wonderland. Not a world of just like pure delight and wildflowers and butterflies. She goes down

the rabbit hole. It's terribly confusing. And one of my favorite parts of that book is when the hookah smoking caterpillar says, who are you? And Alice is like, well, I'm Alice. And she's talking about the family she comes from and everything. And then she's like, you know, sometimes I don't know who I am. And you know, this is like, there are several times today, I have no idea who I am. And so I read that for grownups to be really at times question who we are, what our identity is, how we identify ourselves. And that can be a great opportunity to let ourselves evolve. I'll say one more thing about this, which is one neuroscientist says that wonder de-centers the self, can de-center who we think we are so that ultimately we can re-center. Kind of like what you said, it can disorient us so we can

reorient ourselves to who we're becoming or maybe more of who we've always been. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. My sense is also that this notion of bewilderment, this disorientation, whether it comes from us stepping into it voluntarily or just through circumstance, has also got to be how we perceive it has to be related to the stakes of the bewilderment. If it is literally the stakes are life and death, if it's literally the stripping away of who we believe ourselves to be, our sense of identity, that's one thing. Whereas if the stakes are just really low, what are we going to have for dinner tonight? I don't know, but I'm okay being bewildered about that because the stakes are really not significant to me. So I imagine that the stakes that we're talking about when we step into a space of bewilderment

play into the way that we feel about saying yes or no to that space? It is the stakes. And I believe it can be the stage in our life. It can be the conditions. Do we feel actually skilled in navigating bewilderment? And part of the book's premise is we can reskill ourselves in each of these different facets. So yes, the stakes can play a factor on whether or not we're willing to hold the space of bewilderment. I think the conditions, life circumstances, but also our relationships, you know, not to go through the deep woods alone also can play a pivotal factor. And I guess hope ties into that also, because like you said, I think sometimes when we hear the word hope, there's another word that gets attached to it that we recoil from. And that's, you know, it becomes the phrase false hope or delusion.

You know, like there's, well, you've got hope, but honestly, there's really no basis for your hope. And what you're talking about is hope with basis. But I guess that in your mind, you use the word hope and you fold that into it. I wonder if that is one of the things, and I guess maybe this is why you consider them a pairing, that makes bewilderment okay.

Because if you step into a space of bewilderment, the unknown, and yet there's something in you that believes that something better is on the other side, that sense of hope, then it makes the experience better or more easeful. Does that make sense to you? It does make sense. And it is in part why they're paired. Hope really comes about in moments of crisis and adversity. Someone within our community and one of the small circles I lead was recently in ER for COVID, more than likely. And so, you know, very gingerly, I was offering a few practices along the way related to hope. And so I can review those, but I also want to, if we have time, tell a story about Nick Cave that can illustrate well for us a different framing of hope. Before I do that, I will say too, again, I had a negative association for years related to hope

for just the very reasons you described. I tend to be proactive. I tend to not just have wishful thinking. And that seemed like a sort of default, like, oh, let's just hope that the sun will come out tomorrow. But the science of hope completely disabused that of me, as well as when I took stock of the people I work with and the people I interviewed, it helped me see hope differently. So one of the important practices we can take is to set our sights on some small goal, very doable goal, maybe for the day or for the week. Like, let me just get there. It just sets our sight a little forward. The next practice is to deliberately daydream. And I've been exploring this for over a decade, deliberately daydreaming. And then it was actually Scott Barry Kaufman who

led me to the research of Jerome Singer, who kind of revamped daydreaming as a legitimate field of study in psychology. And he calls it constructive daydreaming, but we call it deliberate daydreaming. You actively are looking ahead to the future and in sensory detail, imagining how you're going to get toward that site, toward that future horizon. And then the next is to just take some small creative step toward that. Surround yourself with hope. Just a few other hopeful people tend to keep our spirits buoyant, our moods buoyant enough to keep finding our way. The other is just to be open to small signs of beauty along the way. The butterfly, I told you, landing unexpectedly. I'm not a big sign seeker. I'm not one to construct some big meaning out of

signs, but I couldn't help but just take it as some small winged hope for me just to make it through. And obviously it stayed with me for years in terms of making meaning of my life, which is really important for people in times of crisis. And then ultimately, one can spread hope. So the story I'd just love to share with your listeners is about Nick Cave, who is this phenomenal, multi-creative musician, bard, songwriter. He writes films for, I think, a Harry Potter score and so forth. He's one of the most renowned musicians in all of Australia. And by 2015, he was really kind of at his peak. But to go back maybe even to like 2000, he married his wife Susie and they had twin sons. And he describes himself in an interview around that time as becoming a nine to five man. His muse

had a clock, like he showed up at his studio nine to five and so forth, had boundaries because he wanted to be a full-on father as well. It's something I really respect. And he continued to produce, continued to be a wonderful father and husband. And in 2015, one of his sons fell tragically off of a cliff to his death from head injuries. And I can now tell this story without choking up because I have two young daughters and I know you have a beloved daughter as well. I can't fathom this. And he of course said that he was incredibly de-centered. He and Susie's whole world was just completely off. And one thing that helped him get through was surrounding himself with hope. His community, his community of fans reached out in mass and finally started the series

of letters on his blog, The Red Hand Files, just responding so genuinely, intimately to his readers. And the second thing that got him through actually comes out in the first letter in The Red Hand Files, what helped him get through. He said he had lost his center. And what was his center? He said, as a creative person, he said, it's probably true for everybody. It was a sense of wonder. And that wonder was gone. The trauma took it away for Susie and me. And it was gradually, he said, gradually I had to find my way back into my creative world. It was loose, it was disorienting, writing sort of shards whenever he could. And that helped him find his way back. And he produced a incredible album where you really see how wonder can meet us on the other side of grief.

It's called Ghost Teen. And it's about the presence of his son as a ghostine. It's gorgeous. It's haunting, but really helps us see how moments of wonder can get us through times of adversity and crisis. Yeah, so powerful. Bring us to the final pairing here of the six facets. Final pairing are connection and admiration. And these are where really we can deepen our bonds

with one another, both familiar and strangers. They are really the most important facets I feel like for our times. Connection is what I call the flock facet. It responds to the sort of yearning to sync up with each other or longing to belong. It's where we can really feel supported and supportive in collaborations and in relationship. Admiration is a beautiful facet, one I think overlooked. I'm perhaps most proud of that

chapter. It's what I call the mirror facet. And I define admiration as perhaps a surprising love we experience for someone's excellence in character or craft. When we witness somebody being full force in who they are or doing something virtuous or just being so skilled at what they do and how they do it, we can feel the sort of love and it awakens, I think, something in us perhaps to be just a little better at what we do and how we do it or who we are. So yeah, the connection facet has a direct relationship to Camp GLP, which we could dive into if we have time, but those are really important facets. Yeah, I love that. And the connection facet for sure, for me has been something that has been

a facet of my access to wonder and also a source of wonder for me. It's interesting. I had, we had a little while back Valerie Corr on the podcast who is just stunningly incredible human being. And she brought up wonder in the context of the other, you know, and really in the context of this facet you're talking about here, connection. You know, if we can see somebody who like, doesn't look like us, doesn't believe like us,

doesn't move through the world like us and approach them from a place of wonder, it just profoundly changes our ability to connect not just with that one individual, but with all individuals and all beings who don't look and see and pray and believe and all the other stuff like us. And it sounds like that's a lot of what you're talking about. It really is. In fact, I think in a week or two, I'm going to talk with Valerie's team about our shared commitment to the practices of wonder specifically in these contexts.

I can remember having a conversation with my editor about the importance of this chapter, and I got so emotional. And she was like, oh, you're talking about love. I'm like, yeah, yeah. And it just breaks my heart what I see happening among our fellow human beings. So it is so important, and it's such a practice. I take people through some stories in that chapter. Interesting. I invite people to take bias inventories also of when was a time when you met somebody for the first time and you might have quickly sized them up in your bias box. part of our sort of survival wiring sometimes that we do. There's no bias shaming, actually. It's just part of what we can do sometimes. And then how did you give them an opportunity or give yourself an opportunity to unbox them, right? To really see them anew. And when you see somebody

anew, that is a moment of wonder. When you see what's real and true and beautiful about them. That is a moment of wonder. And conversely, having them do this with somebody that they know, somebody whose sentences they want to complete, like a partner or a spouse, how have you boxed them in? And when have you given yourself the opportunity to unbox them? So yes, these are really, really important practices. And a lot of them crystallized actually in two situations at Camp GLP. And for those who don't know, by the way, Camp GLP, for five years, we brought together some 400-something people from around the world, took over a kid's sleep away camp for four days at the end of every summer and you know co-played cohabited co-learned co-everythinged

and it was one of the most stunning experiences and and Jeffrey was a a regular in the community and a part of that experience thanks for for that context, because I had known you from that conversation and some connections. And then you started this summer camp. It was only like 45 minutes from where we lived in the Hudson Valley. I like Jonathan. I love summer camp as a boy. It's really where I came so alive in so many ways. So I thought, why not? So I was like, oh, let me get over my solitary introvert self and I'll sign up for the dormitory experience too. And so I get there a little late because I live so close and there are 400 people milling about gathering who've had hours to

connect and they're all talking, getting ready for dinner. And my heart is really beating and I'm looking for you. And of course you're locked up somewhere because you're more of an introvert than I am. And so I am trying to walk through the social gauntlet, hoping somebody will just catch my eye and pull me into a conversation, which doesn't happen twice. So I make a beeline for behind the cabins to the woods, to the piney woods. I'm like, what am I doing here? What have I done? And so I created this motto that's become so essential

in our community of open up, don't size up. Like open up, don't size up. Part of my fear, I think, was being sized up as well as just like watching my tendency to size up others, friend or foe, friend or foe. And so I gave myself the intention of just be completely open to whomever and just ask them questions about their stories of what brought them here. And that turned out to be the most beautiful set of days with 400 strangers that I

had experienced. And then you invited me back a couple of years later to lead a wonder interventions at work workshop. And about 90 people showed up 90 strangers for that i shared with them that experience and they were all nodding their head like oh yeah i know that that's me what i found the most surprising part of that work the wonder interventions work we've done things with their young genius meditation was putting them in pairs and teaching them ways to be fully present with each other and to see each other anew and to experience the wonder between them, which of course led to a lot of tears. And so, yeah, I attribute in part that workshop to really crystallizing that part of the research for me. I love that. Yeah, that was an interesting experience for, I think,

all of us on many levels. It's funny because we, for some odd reason, there was a very high ratio of people who identify as introverts who would show up literally alone, having traveled from the other side of the world to this place simply because of a feeling that they had that it was the place they needed to be. And over the years, we came to really understand that and to create mechanisms to immediately start to greet people and give them excuses and tools to literally walk up to any stranger and start to step into that space of wonder with them as we started to realize that folks wouldn't necessarily do it automatically

because me showing up in that scenario, if I was going to somebody else, I wouldn't. So we're like, oh, we need to actually create structure around this and tools the same way that you've done with so much of your work. It's like, we assume that we should just know all of these things. We should know how to become more open.

We should know how to become more curious and step into a space of bewilderment and hope and connection, admiration. Like, isn't this just part of human nature? And well, maybe for some people to a certain extent, yes. But like we all fall on a spectrum with all those six facets and we need help, you know? And I love the fact that you've identified

not just these six facets, which are so critical, which give us access to this gorgeous state, but along the way, I mean, you've shared just like a small snippet on the tool side, but there's like this robust toolbox for us to be able to build and build and build and say like, okay, these are things that we can enhance and increase in the way that we step into our lives. And one thing I want to touch on also before we come to a close is, you know, part of the thing that I think pulls us away from this also, and this is something that you write about and you've spoken about for years is there was a certain bias often against wonder that we need to disrupt to be able to actually step into and explore and

even say yes to using the tools in the first place. Talk to me a bit about this. Yeah. Thank you for asking that question. So I actually want to put it in the context to, you know, part of my heritage is Scottish Irish. My 12 year old had this assignment recently. And so that brought it back to life. And then coincidentally, she and I watched two films set in Ireland recently. One is Sing Street, which is a great story of a boy who wants to become a singer and all of his Irish friends are like, what do you want to do that for? And then the other one is Billy Elliot, the great story about the boy again in Ireland who wants to become a dancer. And his father's like ballet, ballet, like what? And so it turns out like there used to be a word in Scotland for the wonders, which was a sort of gazing illness that we get if you're just like in sort of a stupor. So I always imagined,

you know, like the boy out in the field who's got a case of the wonder, like, oh, that lad will never amount to anything. And certainly we have inherited, right, this work ethic to be valuable in the world. You must work hard. And the whole history of work that I've been diving into, which I know you have as well, has been premised, at least in the past hundred years in this country, on human beings being units of labor to be efficient, controllable, and speedy, expeditious, right? So we've inherited this, whether we know it or not. We swam in this water of hyper productivity. And I know I have, and I know I valued myself, my hard work ethic for so long. And so wonder

doesn't seem productive. Wonder doesn't seem measurable. So how could we value it? It turns out that for many of the reasons we've described is that, like, not only is wonder valuable, it's our birthright and potentially, according to evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, and psychologists, possibly part of our evolutionary advantage for how we have thrived over the millennia. So I want to acknowledge that, but there are, of course, internal biases then that we have adapted naturally. Certain fears of looking foolish or too idealistic in a cynical world is part of the bias that we have adapted against wonder or wonder as kids. It's foolish. It's luxury, it's a privilege. All of those are some of the cultural biases that we've inherited. So yes, so many of these practices in this book are designed to help us disrupt those biases and to actively seek these experiences of wonder that will disrupt our biased perceptions.

Yeah, you have a frame and actually an acronym D.O.S.E., which is shorthand for detect default pattern or downer reactions. The O is open up, pause, feel. The S is seek out wonder and E, extend the wonder, like reflect, make meaning, let it linger, let it grow. And I feel like if we can embody that as sort of like an ethos when we step into the world, that is a powerful lens to bring to literally almost anything that we do. Anything that we do. When we make this a part of our daily morning practice, right, just to up the wonder ratio, it really can shift the lens on everything. I love that. Good place for us to come full circle as well. So hanging out in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Well, I just got the chills, so that's a good sign.

It's certainly in moments of having genuine friends and friendship, genuine connections with other people who are aimed toward a common direction to make things better for all beings. And fortunately, that's what I'm feeling more of these days. And I, and I wish that for, for everybody. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet, you'll also love the conversation we had with iconic author Anne Lamott about opening to all that life brings your way. You'll find a link to Anne's episode in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so,

go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you appreciate the work that we've been doing here on Good Life Project, go check out my new book, Sparked. It'll reveal some incredibly eye-opening things about maybe one of your favorite subjects, you, and then show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work

as a source of meaning, purpose, and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes or you can also find it at your favorite bookseller now. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project. If you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The University of Victoria's MBA in Sustainable Innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology,

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