17 More-Than-Manifesto Reminders to Help You Live the Quest
Certain tenets ink my brain like lines from a resonant poem or song.
They define who I am and keep me centered when I feel like I’m veering off-track. These tenets arise from lived heart expansion and heart explosion, from daft pursuits of burning yearnings and from the pain of feeling & making sense of other people’s sorrows.
For years, I’ve kept these tenets mostly to myself except when in conversation with a loved one or friend, in the heat of a presentation or a client consulting/jam session or within a program. 3 years ago, I wrote down these tenets. I let them incubate, steep, and assume more refined shape. I didn’t just want to ship yet another manifesto. (More on derivative manifestos in another piece.) I didn’t want to release them until I felt the burning need to.
But something has happened in the past year. I felt the burn.
You can scroll down and download my gift to you. If it would help you to know my process for finally releasing this variation of a manifesto (especially if you’re writing your own), I’ve included those insights, too.
And – I’ve invited you to give me back your own reminder within the manifesto poster below. So, please do that.
Your wisdom feeds me to keep giving back. In last year’s State of Wonder Dispatch, I articulated how this writer allowed room for the entrepreneur and vice-versa – a dispatch that numerous people shared and resonated with. I realized how deeply my own quest for integrity resonated with thousands of others.
Last summer, amidst the bliss of witnessing big impact in the Your Captivating Book Mentorship Program, I had to acknowledge something I already knew deep down: That Tracking Wonder was about much more than my pursuit of wonder. Tracking Wonder is about all intelligent creatives’ and business artists’ hell bent yearning to create lives & books & business stories that are aligned with their deepest virtues. With integrity.
But here’s the kicker for the Tracking Wonder Pack:
You want to go about this creative quest with wit, wisdom, and wonder.
Wit – the clever use of your finite resources & tools, the capacity to laugh amidst sorrow, the brilliance to deflect obstacles with humor and creative problem-solving
Wisdom – the truth that comes from lived experience, intentional action, humility, and paradoxical thinking
Wonder – the original genius within each of us that keeps cracking us open to possibility without letting us be foolish or taken advantage of
This summer, these tenets congealed when I re-read Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and hovered on his “mentorly” advice about living the question:
[H]ave patience with everything unresolved in your heart and…try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
By this autumn I knew what I and Tracking Wonder were about. And I knew our mission: Live the Quest. And I knew what we creative questers and business artists are up against: The World of Buzz, inside and out. And then one night in December the tenets became reminders and finally took form as a whole. I had the makings of a genuine manifesto.
What to Call It
The collection merited a name more accurate to what Tracking Wonder is all about and what these tenets actually do for you as part of our patch of the planet. I bandied a few titles around with my designer and two other team members. Nothing stuck. I knew these soulful reminders were tenets we know already within us are true and that get us back on-track when tracking wonder. Then the metaphor was obvious:
A Compass of Wonder
If not a moral compass, then at least a creative compass. Something you can reference when you feel as if you’re getting way too lost in an unproductive way. Something that can you help you re-calibrate when you feel distracted by the Siren Songs in the World of Buzz.
This Compass of Wonder offers you 17 Reminders to Keep You On-Track. At the bottom, you have space to write your own. Don’t leave home without it. I released it to the hundreds of people who showed up for our Live the Quest webinars. Now it’s time to give it to everyone.
It’s time for all of us to create from our life’s work and to shape this one wild life as the quest that it is. In that way, maybe we make a chorus in response to the white noise.
Download it here: https://trackingwonder.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Live-the-Quest-Compass-of-Wonder.pdf
Post it on one of your create space’s wall and near your computer. Fold a copy and secure it in your Moleskine, your backpack, your portable create packet or carry-on bag. When you’re lost, reference it.
Share Your Own and Spread the Wonder
If this Compass of Wonder resonates with you, do your own patch of the planet some good and forward this link to them. A compass of wonder keeps you on-track. (Click to Tweet)
Invite them to share their reminder with you. And share your own reminder in the comments below.
Thanks for running with me,
