A Season for Wonder
I’ve been exploring a theory over the past few years: ambitions follow a creative process, and that process suggests that ambitions, like personal growth, are non-linear. Rather, ambitions go through stages, and our life goals are inherently cyclical, requiring both seasons of dormancy and reflection and committed drive.
I’ve learned through my own experience and my research that knowing we go through both states and honoring each at the right time is helpful to finding more sustainability. When we stop trying to choose between them and understand which state we are in at the current moment, we can unlock a more joyful, easeful way to pursue projects and grow over time. In fact, it can even be counterproductive to drive forward when what we truly need is to lay fallow.
I think this is particularly helpful to consider as we end the year, at a time we so often feel the pull to push to get more done, when what we really need is to pause and create space for dormancy and hibernation.
The Creative Cycle: Wonder and Rigor
This idea came to light in a recent podcast conversation with Dr. Natalie Nixon, a creativity expert who developed the WonderRigor™ Framework. The framework is rooted in the idea that creativity moves in cycles. First there’s wonder: exploration, curiosity, asking what’s possible. Then there’s rigor: the focus, the hard work, the execution.
In our conversation, Natalie shared how this was true for her own ambitions:
“My ambition has been fueled by my dreams as well as thinking about what’s the next, first step, and then the next and next.”
Wonder to identify what to pursue, then rigor to move forward.
Why does this matter? Because it’s easy to get stuck in rigor mode, in the constant doing. The pull to always be productive. And yet, at the right times, we need to allow ourselves to create space and move into the other stage, to imagine and think about what’s next and what’s possible. To follow our energy and interests—to wonder.
Creativity Is Curiosity
I’ve been longing for a wonder cycle for some time, and since I launched my book in June, I’ve created more space for exploration. A question I’ve been asking is what creativity means in my life. What is it to live a creative life? If I’m not writing a book, if I’m not focused on honing my writing craft, if I’m not doing some other normalized form of creativity, what is its role and what does it look like?
To process the book experience and answer this question, I’ve listened to podcasts, read creativity books, and interviewed a guest on my podcast.
Time and again, a definition coalesced around this idea: creativity is living with curiosity. It’s to wonder.
My guest Laura Holson, an award-winning former New York Times writer and founder of The Box Sessions, had this to add about living a creative life:
“I think people think creative life and they think, ‘Oh, I have to be a painter, or I have to draw.’ But creativity really is a way of thinking. It’s rooted in curiosity. A creative life is saying ‘yes I can.’ I can give myself permission to do something I wouldn’t normally do.”
Permission. That word matters. As adults, we often need permission or, as came up in our conversation many times, an invitation to wonder, to play, to follow our curiosity without needing to call ourselves an artist or be “good” at it.
End of Year: Permission to Pause, Be Creative, and Wonder
The sad thing about adulthood is that we are so busy adulting that many of us close ourselves off to being creative, curious, and playing. We need someone—or something—to invite us to let loose.
So let this be your invitation—both to yourself and to those around you. Follow your curiosity. Give yourself and others permission to pause the rigor, and rather allow space to imagine, to play. Because this is your season to wonder, and, by doing so, feel alive.
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Sustainable Ambition offers a strategic approach for pursuing our professional and personal goals in a way that is motivating, meaningful, and manageable from stage to stage, rather than be all consuming in a way that compromises other important aspects of our lives or sacrifices our well-being.