After the Ecstasy, the To-Do’s

9 guidelines for post-retreat integration

When we kiss bliss, there’s a risk.

When you have an exhilarating experience outside of your everyday work life, how do you reintegrate what you’ve experienced with your day-to-day experience?

One answer might be in the plateau not just in the peak.

That’s the focus for this week’s Sunday Dispatch.

Even if you’re not returning from retreat, you might soon go on vacation or steal away for a few days. Something here might resonate.

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If you lead or work with a team, you might like my two latest Psychology Today articles “Boosting Team Creativity in Remote Workplaces” and “What Research Says About the Benefits of Walking at Work.”

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Between Bliss and Boom

Whoosh. You’ve returned from a retreat or conference or off-site experience that cracked open your heart and mind. Your vision is expansive, and your spirit launched into the next leg of your most impactful work.

Then, boom. You return home and to the office. Your spouse reminds you that the juicer is broken. Your senior partner reminds you of the unhappy clients’ work waiting. Your child’s got the flu.

Sound familiar?

Last week I led a dozen remarkable change-makers through the UNPLUGGED + UNBOUND Immersive Retreat. The retreat provided a safe and brave container for each of them to reimagine how they could approach work, life, and their bold idea or endeavor.

Think: Tracking Wondestyle innovation incubator with mindful unplugging, wonder walks, and deftly facilitated experiences for heartful collaboration and soulful solitude. The success of the experience’s hidden U arc surprised most of them.

Everyone came away not only more confident but also with a more clear direction for next best steps in the coming months. Plus, they came away with an amazingly supportive pack of peers & mentors.

On the last morning, as we mapped out what’s next, some of us got a bit daunted when we pulled out our calendars.

How could it be possible for me to make space to advance this vision amidst so many other competing priorities and existing obligations?

I’m one of them.

The Risk of Bliss & Peak Experiences

“Bliss” can be any experience that brings you elevated exuberance. An ideal vacation. A deep moment of pride, recognition, accomplishment at work or on the stage. An extended flow state in which you’re immersed in work or a project ideally suited to your Genius talents and force of character. A sweet 3.5 minutes of quiet in your mind while meditating. A full 18 minutes riding a wave on a surfboard.

How is it possible to bring a bit of bliss with you to work, whatever your work may be?

One of Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield’s telling book titles is After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. The condition describes a variety of post-bliss, post-intensive experiences in which we feel as if “daily life” pales compared to the “peak experiences” we just went through.

In my own 25-plus-year pursuit to live deliberately and shape days artfully, I’ve sought ways to mediate what could be an unnecessary schism between the ecstasy and the laundry. Hence, my tracking wonder.

The risk of experiencing your version of bliss is that “the rest of life” and the rest of work can pale. What happens? You can resent the rest of your life. You can get addicted to flow.

Abraham Maslow, whose work made popular the idea of “peak experiences,” warned of the dangers of seeking the peaks.

In a follow-up foreword to an updated version of his book, he notes that great lessons from true - not false - mystics such as Zen monks and humanistic psychologists is that “the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s back yard.”

Bring Doses of Wonder With You

This pursuit also has framed how I try to design experiences that equip professionals and creatives to return home and “do the laundry” if not in ecstasy then at least with a slightly enhanced lens.

Here are a few suggestions you can start with this week (even if you haven’t experienced bliss in a while!).

Call it “The Post-Ecstasy Laundry List.” It’s a set of suggestions for sustaining your creative quest at home, at the office, in the studio, at the desk. Test them out, and let me know which of these most resonates and what you would add or amend.

1. Stand in devotion with your best work.

It’s easy to fall in love with an idea or a fantasy. How many such ideas have you fallen in and out of love with this year? But it’s another thing to stand in love with the best work you’re devoted to. For 5 minutes every morning, remind yourself in writing or journaling what you’re devoted to that drives your decisions and attention this very day.

And share your devotion. This past week we each repeatedly reminded each other of our respective devotions and how we support one another’s devotion. That’s a different level of collaboration you won’t read about in most business books.

2. Guard against the news and noise.

Reintegrating from an UNPLUGGED retreat means carefully reintegrating the Digital Matrix. Especially these days. You might discern what top 3 top issues you most need to and want to pay attention. What voices you most need to and want to listen to. It’s a practice to keep curious without doomscrolling.

3. Readjust the center of your attention.

Your calendar reflects your values, as my wise friend and colleague Bob Gower often says. If you have an idea, endeavor, or initiative that’s important, make space for it on your calendar. Scheduled Focus & Flow blocks each week or month in advance. Make those blocks sacred if you must. Even better, sacrosanct.

One participant painted one large circle to represent their core endeavor that had been pushed aside. Surrounding the large circle, they painted myriad other circles of different yet smaller sizes to reflect the other facets of work, life, and attention that will integrate with the central one.

That poster goes on her work space’s wall. A soulful reminder and redirect.

To readjust your center often requires relearning how to say No to more and Yes to less.

4. Work and design with feeling & wonder.

When you get distressed or in compare-&-compete mode, ask yourself, “What emotion do I want to instill not only in myself but also in someone else today?” Doing so can shift how you relate to someone at work this week.

This can be your opportunity to bring forward one practice or fresh habit you experienced while away. For the people at UNPLUGGED+UNBOUND, that includes unplugging mindfully, taking wonder walks, being outdoors often, tracking questions a particular way, and reclaiming our young genius traits every morning.

What one bit of “bliss” can you bring to your work right now?

5. Regard your daily work and offers as an offering.

“Work is love made visible,” writes Kahlil Gabrin. When you hold this frame in mind and hand as you work this week, then your work is not “yours.” It’s relational. It’s ours.

6. Do It Together.

Either stay in touch with someone who shared part of your experience or find a close friend or loved one to “debrief” your experience with. Not everyone will “get” it. So choose carefully, and hold your expectations lightly. Still, we gain momentum on meaningful ideas and work by doing it together. DIT beats DIY.

Again, Maslow critiques his first edition on peak experiences as being too biased toward individual experiences and “too hard on groups, organizations, and communities.” He says confidently that the need for community and belongingness is “itself a basic need.”

7. Practice a pause.

More than once, people at U+U said they were learning again how to slow down well. Sometimes you need to step back and recalibrate your emergent vision.

On a recent Note, I noted that “I’m curious about all the ways and means and practices you use to pause and ponder amidst uncertainty and change - versus reacting, jumping to quick fixes, or outright distracting or numbing yourself - especially when you’re making a complex decision or wondering about the next direction for your work or creative endeavor.

Blair Glaser

, executive coach of the HI Stack, offered her thoughtful distinctions between pausing from the news (see #2 above) vs decision-making (see #7).

Katie Andraski

takes walks in wonder while

Fabio Posca

, host of the Journey to Success Club, finds intentional breathing and journaling effective, and divergently wondrous composer

Duncan Neilson

finds “parallel processing” an effective way to sort the noise from the signals. What about you?

8. Integrate regular retreats.

Regular mini-retreats not far from the office or home can replenish your spirit and recalibrate your vision. One unique facet of UNPLUGGED+UNBOUND is we have at least two Integration Sessions that follow the retreat. These sessions allow us to check in with each other and share how we each are integrating the wisdom we gleaned.

You can download our Deep Dive Retreat Planner. (Maybe I should update a piece on the art of taking in-home creative retreats and how to build up to taking your solo deep dive retreat. What do you think?)

9. Savor the laundry and the plateau as much as the peak.

When you shape space and time for this kind of daily Work, the rest of your day unfolds with a different subjective rhythm - no matter what hardships and challenges surprise you on any given day. Maybe. Your computer will freeze. Your clothes will shrink in the dryer. Your child will cry in the middle of the night. But maybe, just maybe, you will regard more and more of “the rest of life” and the non-flow work tasks as a continuum of and not a conflict with your best work and with your Genius quest.

Maybe you up your wonder ratio day by day.

So much is possible.

Your Turn to Wonder

»> How do you reintegrate after an extended elevating, intense, or expansive experience away from your daily work & life?

Let me know what most resonates and what you would add or amend.

Let me know what’s unfolding for you in the comments or via email reply.

“In these most complex times, Jeffrey Davis’s book will feel like an epiphany in its reading, opening your mind and heart to that most vital of human strengths - wonder.” - Dacher Keltner, PhD, professor of psychology, UC Berkeley, and founding director of the Greater Good Science Center

Well, I’m honored to work with you here, and I’ll see you soon.

Thanks for running with me,

Jeffrey

Reintroduction to new trackers: I’m author of Tracking Wonder (Sounds True), a Next Big Idea Club finalist. Fast Company, MindBody Green, Psychology Today, and other leading outlets - I’m grateful to say - have featured my insights.

For over 25 years, I’ve equipped entrepreneurs, creatives, and teams to think more expansively and bring more meaning into their work so they can advance what matters most. Without burnout. Learn more about Tracking Wonder Consultancy here and The Wonder HUB here.

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