Exercise
Art Exercise
For You: Your Aesthetic Pathway
- Beauty Archaeology: Think back to the last time a piece of art (e.g., visual, musical, written, or performance) made you completely lose track of time or forget your surroundings. What was it about that experience that pulled you out of yourself? How can you seek more of that type of aesthetic experience?
- The Reframing Challenge: Choose something mundane in your daily environment (like Rob Walker’s traffic cone) and spend five minutes finding three elements of beauty or design in it. Notice how shifting from dismissal to appreciation changes your mental state and pulls focus away from internal chatter.
Your Team: Collective Aesthetic Moments
- Art That Moves Us: During your next team meeting, ask everyone to share one piece of art (broadly defined— music, film, visual art, design, even a beautifully crafted presentation) that made them forget about everything else for a few minutes. What patterns emerge in what moves your team members?
- Office Beauty Hunt: Challenge the team to identify one overlooked element of beauty or good design in your workplace (e.g., architecture, lighting, even the way someone organized their desk). Share discoveries in your next meeting. How does actively seeking beauty shift the team’s relationship to their environment?
I’m Danielle B. Baldwin—coach, facilitator, keynote speaker, and proud firestarter.
I work with curious, courageous leaders who are ready to grow beyond what’s safe and into what’s next. Whether it’s in the boardroom, the backwoods, or the pages of my new book Sparking Greatness, I help people find clarity, ditch burnout, and lead with heart. My job? To make you feel seen, challenged, and just uncomfortable enough to change.