Gratitude and Awe

November 22, 2016

by Carla Johnson

“When its over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”
– Mary Oliver

If I had to choose between all hedonic pleasures life has to offer, I’d choose travel.

Travel brings out the awe-struck child in me. We live in a world that’s become so small through technology that it takes mere seconds to speak with someone on the other side of the globe. We can travel to places in hours that used to take years. Travel reminds me to feel gratitude for the life I live and the work I do.

Feelings of gratitude and awe get lost in our everyday lives. We’re caught up with deadlines, bureaucracy and daily irritations. This makes us blind to the things that are important.

Filmmaker, futurist and epiphany addict Jason Silva points out that once we create a comfort zone we rarely step out of it. It’s called hedonic adaptation. When we are repeatedly exposed to the same stimuli, we become numb to it. It becomes invisible.

During this week when Americans are reminded to be thankful, I’d like to share one of my favorite videos from Jason titles, simply, Awe.

Happy Thanksgiving, and may this week of gratitude turn into a year of awe.

Photo credit: Flickr user Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

About Carla

Carla Johnson Innovation Creativity Speaker Author

Carla Johnson helps leaders who are often paralyzed by traditional thinking. They suffer from slow growth, an eroding competitive advantage, low employee engagement, and depleted investor confidence. Their teams lack purpose and progress and constantly battle a resistance to change and new ideas.

As the world’s leading innovation architect, Carla’s spent 20 years helping leaders shatter limits and discover undiscovered possibilities. Through years of research, she’s developed a simple, scalable 5-step process that teaches people how to consistently produce inspired ideas that lead to uncommon outcomes.