Wonder and fear don’t coexist well in the brain. Where fear narrows perception and drives maladaptive certainty-seeking, wonder opens it. Wonder is a state of high uncertainty that’s voluntary — it’s uncertainty on your terms, and it produces dopamine rather than cortisol.
Joe describes planning 300 years into the future at an AOA offsite. Nobody can predict what that looks like, but the questions that emerge from that kind of wonder are radically different from “What’s our P&L 3 months from now?” The awe itself changes the quality of thinking.
“Wonder and fear don’t coexist well together in the brain.”
Maladaptive behavior in uncertainty assumes certainty where it doesn’t exist (“I’m fucked” or “I’ll be out by Christmas”). Wonder does the opposite: it allows you to see the certainty where it does exist — in the present moment, in how you want to be, in what’s actually available right now.
Related Concepts
- Wonder and stress cannot coexist neurologically
- Wonder eliminates defensiveness
- The only real certainty is how you want to be