Wonder: Your Mental Skill for Surprising Innovation
Every day our brains process billions of data points, from the temperature of the room to the tone of someone’s voice. To make our lives easier – and avoid complete information overload – our brains find patterns in the chaos and establish routines or habits in order to make room in our busy brains. We build cognitive walls to categorize our thoughts and sensations into Mind Rooms that help us shape our mental space and interpret the world around us.
While these walls help us navigate our daily lives more fluidly, they can also lock us into unconscious patterns that prevent us from leading a creative life of meaning and mastery over the long-term. Fortunately, new research shows that the brain is more like a muscle than we think. By flexing cognitive skills like a muscle, you can occasionally break through your cognitive walls or biases to innovate novel, useful solutions in your life and in your work.
In my decades of consulting and teaching – based in part on assimilating research in positive psychology, neuropsychology, creativity, Zen Buddhism, and Yogic skillful means -the single most effective cognitive skill to break down these mental walls is wonder.
Yes, wonder- what one anthropologist calls “the hallmark of the human species.”
How can you foster wonder to dissolve these cognitive walls?
In this short Wonder at Work video, I share three practices that can infuse your life and your work with more wonder. These “wonder interventions” help you train your brain to:
- Navigate crises when your world is in flux.
- Dissolve your habitual biased perception to see what’s true and possible.
- Stay receptive and engaged instead of reactive and enraged.
- Shape more meaningful work.
- Approach challenges with more creativity.
If you like this video, please share it with colleagues, creative peers, or friends whom you think could benefit from fostering more wonder in their work.
To learn more, take our free Wonder@Work Assessment. Based on the results, you’ll receive a list of recommended experiments to track more wonder in certain domains.
