Jeffrey Davis: Tracking Wonder and Loving Life

Good Life Project

Jonathan Fields / Acast

Education, How To, Self-improvement, Business, Health & Fitness

4.6 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2016

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today's guest is obsessed with wonder. In fact, it's his vocation.

Jeffery Davis is the founder of Tracking Wonder, where he explores how to reconnect with wonder and also help people tell their their stories through books, businesses and beyond.

As a kid, he became concerned about paying attention to life and ensuring that he'd never lose his imagination. That led him to become a poet, a teacher, an author and then...everything fell apart.

He realized he'd been living entirely "from the neck up," largely disembodied and disconnected from his heart. That awakening launched a years-long quest to rediscover a deeper, more soulful driver. It brought him back to wonder as a driving force in his life and eventually as his career.

He has taught his signature approaches to creativity, writing, and branding at numerous universities, conferences, and centers around the world. An author, speaker, and online columnist for Psychology Today, he is in dogged pursuit of what helps creatives thrive amidst constant challenge and change. He lives in a farmhouse in the Hudson Valley with his wife and two girls.

Maybe his biggest true driver, though, is to be the kind of adult whose life reveals to his daughters the grace and beauty and joy of a wonder that never ends.

His new book of poetry is Coat Thief.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

The gift that his father gave him, passed down from his grandfather.
How he ended up living with his bachelor father during high school.
How he faked being an extrovert growing up.
Why his friends called him 'The Mystery Man'.
His decision between joining the monastery or becoming a poet.
The entry point that broke him out of his intellect and into his body.
The two-fold silent promise he made to his baby girl after she was born.

Mentioned In This Episode:

Connect with Jeffrey: Tracking Wonder
Quiet by Susan Cain
Beat Generation
William Carlos Williams: "The Red Wheelbarrow"
Wallace Stevens
Robert Creeley
City Reservoir by Jeffrey Davis
Focus by Daniel Goleman
TKV Desikachar
The Journey from the Center to the Page: Yoga Philosophies and Practices as Muse for Authentic Writing by Jeffrey Davis
Shiva Suturas
Grab your spot at the Camp GLP at the Early Bird discount rate!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	So I'll just say in short that wonder is like it is the emotional, cognitive, aesthetic
0:08.7	experience that most cracks us open to what is real and to what is here and what is true.
0:16.2	It is the experience it opens us up to that.
0:19.6	It's at the heart of the creative impulse.
0:23.2	And once I started to understand that, I also realized that it was wonder as part of what
0:29.5	I've been pursuing all along.
0:31.7	That when I was grieving my imagination, it was some part that desire to have that space
0:37.1	of wonder.
0:41.1	When this week's guest, Jeffrey Davis, was just a little kid, he started journaling
0:45.0	and thinking about paying attention and not losing his imagination.
0:50.2	Pretty unusual for a young kid, that turned into a deep fascination with language and creativity
0:57.2	that led him to become a poet and a teacher.
0:59.6	But in the middle of his life, he also realized that he was living essentially from the neck
1:03.9	up and kind of a disembodied existence and had left his heart and his body behind.
1:09.9	So that set him off on a journey of deep personal discovery and also international travel.
1:15.8	And he came back with a renewed vision on life and a renewed vision of what he wanted
1:19.7	to do with his life.
1:20.7	He since returned to poetry and to teaching and he started a really fascinating consulting
1:25.6	firm called Tracking Wonder, which really helps people track wonder in their own lives
1:30.8	and bring more of it into their careers and professions and every essence of their day.
1:35.8	So really excited to share this conversation with you.
1:38.4	I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
	...

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