Why you should never lose your sense of wonder

I spent an hour watching humpback whales last Sunday and it lifted my mood far more than my daily meditation had.

The reason this excursion onto the rolling ocean turned my weekend around comes down to one very powerful word: wonder.

I had been feeling flat all weekend, struggling with some familiar demons and oppressed by a general sense of futility. I knew I needed to put some distance between my negative headspace and reconnect with hope, which is a fundamental ingredient when you are trying to bring about change. It took about 45 minutes to get out of the harbour and into the open water, where we waited. And waited. And waited. About 40 minutes later I finally caught a glimpse of a mama whale and her baby surfacing to blow out air, and it blew my mind. I saw two more whales after that and I think I said “oh wow!” about a million times. It was – and I’m not exaggerating here – extraordinary. 

Three days earlier I had attended a talk with US writer Leigh Ann Henion, who, as a young mother, realised her world had become too small. So she set off on a ‘wonder pilgrimage’ to see some of the world’s most astonishing natural phenomena – scaling active volcanoes and witnessing vast animal migrations. And then wrote a book about it, entitled (funnily enough) Phenomenon.

“Wonder is an underrated emotion,” she said. “It makes people feel more generous, more connected and more satisfied with life, and makes them feel less materialistic. The reason time passes so slowly when you’re a kid is because you’re always having new experiences.”

If climbing into a deep ravine isn’t an option or even a preference for you (me neither), there are other means to view your world like you’re a wide-eyed child again – and to reap the wellbeing benefits of those experiences. Think: visiting zoos and wildlife parks, star-gazing centres, bush walks and mountain-biking trails, just for starters.

It’s so easy to become immersed in day-to-day life and to forget that there is more to our existence than just work, home life and a steady stream of obligations. But being amazed – *actually* amazed in the true sense of the word, not just in the flippant way we throw the word around these days – is how we reconnect with the world around us. It puts problems into perspective and helps in appreciating the impermanence of what we have. 

About two years ago after I had been struggling with mood so low I had thought I would have to go back on anti-depressants, one of the first signs that the fog was starting to clear was when I started to notice incredible detail around me. Sensing this was significant, I started challenging myself to spot as many beautiful things as I could on my way to work every day. They were small, of course, but as I’ve noted on this blog before, the small things are really the big things. Snail trail patterns on fences, intensely coloured petals, gnarly tree trunks...  you get the picture. This sounds ridiculously twee, I know, but it really was helpful. I wouldn’t say it changed my life but for small moments it got me out of my own head and closer to a state of gratitude for what I had rather than despair over what I didn’t (which had been the root cause of my toxic gloom). It added momentum to a subtle internal shift of ‘looking at the doughnut, not the hole’, so to speak, which was a solid platform for getting myself out of the hole that I was in. When you’re in a deep pit of suffering you can’t see anything but the blackness. Noticing and appreciating beauty reminded me of the colours of joy, and urged me to continue riding out the storm so I could experience more of that. It gently whispered to me: it’s worth the struggle. 

This is why inspiration posters urge you to never lose your sense of wonder. I don’t think I’ve lost mine, but it does go MIA from time to time. Next time that happens I’m going send out a search party. And board a boat.

How trying to be happy can make you very unhappy

Here’s something I’ve noticed about the self-help industry: sometimes it’s not that helpful. 

If you look at the colossal amount of space the self-help section occupies in your bookstore – you guys still visit bookstores, right? Please do; bookstores are struggling and they really need our custom – one theme occupies the most shelf space: the pursuit of happiness.

That makes sense – we all wanna be happy. But if you read the back covers, many of these books are promising a magic formula for designing a life where every moment is happy. I don’t want to criticise books on happiness across the board, because I’m sure they have helped people, but my opinion is that this approach is problematic.

What concerns me is the underlying message – that we should expect to be happy all the time. To me, that idea is dangerous, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Last week I went to a panel session at the Sydney Writers’ Festival with the compelling title How To Live. The comments which struck a chord with me the most came from Paul Dolan, a London-based, internationally renowned expert on happiness and behaviour.

“The happiness industry is a distortion of the original positive psychology [movement]. It’s feeding this idea we are entitled to feel happy, that that is the default setting for humans. So out of the full spectrum of emotions that make us who we are – and all emotions, even the dark ones, have something to teach us – it’s saying that if we’re not feeling happy all the time there’s something wrong with us.”

YES! It’s natural to want to maximise your happiness levels, but unless you’re Miley Cyrus, life is not a constant party, and you’re setting yourself up for disappointment if you are trying to make it so. In fact I’m not sure that’s working out too well for Miley either. As much as we might relish the euphoria of graduating from university or the elation (or perhaps despair, depending on your circumstances!) of finally seeing those two stripes appear on a pregnancy test, happy events aren’t shaping you as a person. It’s the agony of rebuilding your life and healing your fractured heart after the demise of a relationship that teaches you how resilient you are, and that you’re capable of looking after yourself. Darker emotional states instil practical lessons too. It’s the despair of blowing your car’s head gasket in peak traffic that teaches you that if you’re driving a car older than Cyndi Lauper’s back catalogue, you need to top up its oil and water frequently. (This example may or may not be inspired by real-life events.)

Fixating on happiness like it’s some magical destination – the finish line of an emotional marathon littered with disappointing boyfriends, menacing bosses and unflattering haircuts – can also have the effect of lowering your self-esteem. Basically, you’ll wind up feeling like you’re doing life wrong when you’re unable to live in a state of infinite happiness. Ugh. We’ve got enough reasons to feel like we’re failing, thank you very much; experiencing normal human emotions shouldn’t be one of them. 

Instead, I think it’s more helpful to focus on contentment. Because gratitude is a core value for me, I spend time focusing on all the good things in my life. That means that when I get hit by an unexpected curveball and my life starts to feel like a giant pile of poo, I don’t pretend that it’s wonderful. I acknowledge the crapery (that is a word now, I just declared it so) and focus on what comes next, because I know it always gets better in the end, and my life is still, overall, incredible. When you’re broke, lonely and desperately overworked, it’s much easier to return to a baseline state of contentment – because unless your life is completely broken, there is always more right with it than there is wrong. Happiness is a beautiful place to visit, and you should go there often, but you can’t build your home there. 

Paul’s approach is to focus not on the meaning of life but the meaning of moments. As an example, he talked about teaching his child to read: “That has purpose, but doesn’t always have pleasure.”

The take-away message: knowing what’s important to you and what you value can be hugely helpful in achieving life satisfaction – even when things are not going so well. If you can focus on the moments that give you purpose, and celebrate moments of pleasure, you might not need to read a trillion books, or even one book, on happiness. And you’ll be better able to recognise and appreciate it when you stumble upon it. 

the art of accepting compliments

Receiving compliments is not a comfortable experience for me. Because I’m self-employed I have to fly the flag for my work – it is the mark of my “brand” (ugh, please forgive my brief lapse into marketing speak; it won’t happen again) and of my value. Because my work is published on the reg, it’s out there for people to comment on. Thankfully, they seldom do – I don’t receive a lot of feedback, and I’m happy with that. But on the rare occasion someone – generally within the industry, as readers don’t usually correspond unless they want to complain – proffers a compliment on a piece of mine, there’s a part of me that dissolves into cringe mode. 

I used to work with someone who would greet any compliment with a look of faint disgust. Her response was to tell you all the things that she regarded as being wrong with her story, and all the ways she should/could/would have improved it. It was almost like a slap in the face for the person giving the compliment – basically she was saying: ‘your opinion is uninformed and irrelevant, so keep it to yourself’. In her effort not to appear arrogant (FYI being proud of your work is not arrogant!) by deflecting the compliment, she came off as haughty and a little precious. Of course, it’s perfectly healthy to be self-critical – how else will you hone your craft if you can’t see the areas in need of improvement? – but to pour your personal dissatisfaction onto someone who just wanted to say something nice seems somewhat disrespectful. I understand that humility is important but I don’t think discrediting the opinion of someone who had good intentions is very fair.

My response to compliments is much less petulant. Over the years I’ve learned to disregard my discomfort and simply say: ‘thank you, I really appreciate your feedback’. I might not share their affection for the piece, but that’s OK. It’s taken some time to figure out how to separate my feelings about my work from the feelings of others. Even if I’m profoundly disappointed in the way I’ve executed a brief, if someone with no vested interest in that story enjoyed reading it, that’s awesome. I’ll take that. My work is, after all, for other people to read. It’s not some grand monument to hang in the Eternal Gallery of Trudie. 

Despite knowing this, whenever I receive a compliment I feel a small part of myself squirm. Partly this is because I’m shy so I don’t particularly enjoy being singled out in any way. Having attention drawn to something that bears my name – and by extension, drawing attention to myself – is an awkward experience. I much prefer to blend into the background. Unfortunately my work as a healer requires me to stand out.

The cringe factor also comes back to shaky self-esteem – which, I’m happy to report, is increasingly less shaky the more I work on my personal development. I’m better at actively challenging any message I tell myself along the lines of ‘you don’t deserve... ’ It’s harder for me to believe self-deprecating messages than it was in the past; they don't stick like they used to. That doesn’t mean I embrace compliments, but it means I don’t automatically reject them either. It’s a good sign that I am learning – finally – to value myself and my abilities. 

The times they are a-changing. 

Looking backwards, to move forwards. That's how a retrograde rolls

So Mercury retrograde is back in all its badassery. I’ve talked about the ways this planetary cycle can screw up our daily lives, both on this blog and on my Facebook page, so I won’t bang on about it again here. What I do want to reflect on is the way this is actually prompting me to, well, reflect.

Being an introvert and a Scorpio I tend to spend a lot of time in introspection anyway, but when this sort of energetic pull happens, that shift inwards is more pronounced. Retrograde means looking backwards, so it makes sense that this sort of planetary movement would prompt us to look back, in order to help us move forwards. Without making a conscious choice to do so, I’m finding myself naturally looking back on some areas that have tripped me up.

Kris Carr, American cancer survivor and author of Crazy Sexy Kitchen, talks about life going through cycles (nope, not the Circle of Life, but I love that you thought of that. Can we be friends?), similar to the seasons nature goes through. It’s kind of like going through a ‘winter’ – a time of contemplation and stillness – and ‘spring’, a time of renewal and starting afresh, etc. I like this analogy.

Human beings aren’t great at being still, though. When we’re exhausted we drink a Red Bull. When we’re sick, we take a Codral. When we’re bored, we jump on Facebook. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with these things – sometimes you’ve just gotta do what you’ve gotta do to get through what’s ahead of you. But when you consistently ignore the cues your body is giving you to pull back for a while, you’re depriving yourself of valuable time to process and regroup. I’m learning not to feel guilty when I just really need to cancel my plans and spend a Sunday in my pyjamas eating chips, and not to panic that there’s something wrong with me when I’m exhausted despite getting lots of sleep and not being overstressed. That’s just what my body needs in that moment. Sometimes, doing nothing is doing everything.

I don’t know for sure that my current quiet time is due to the Mercury retrograde, but I do know it’s beneficial. Over the past few days I’ve noticed how my attention is being drawn to attitudes and behaviours that I need to address. It's also highlighting things that I’m clinging onto that are no longer serving me. Here are some of the things that have come up for me:

·         * Yesterday I noticed myself fobbing off a younger colleague who had asked me for advice. I realised I was doing this because I felt threatened by her talent and wanted to keep an advantage. That’s an insecurity thing – an ongoing issue for me – and it’s not cool.

·         * While filling out some complicated online documents, I threw a tanty and chucked my phone across the room. (So very mature!) A familiar pattern – I realised I have a tendency to give up too quickly when things seem too hard. I’d been obeying that voice saying ‘you’re stupid’, which is on regular rotation in my internal jukebox. I gave it another go, with a little more patience, and eventually I got there (with some swearing… OK, a LOT of swearing).  

·        *  I noticed how much my attention wanders on the reg. I’m not even talking about long meetings, I’m talking about how in conversation with someone my brain will start thinking about where I need to go next. While I accept that I’ll probably always have this tendency, I do want to learn some techniques to improve my focus. This seems like a good time to work on that.

        I think I’ll use this reflective period to observe these things without judgment, and some of the other stuff that has come up. If I’m aware of them, I can choose different responses. May as well do something useful while I sit and wait for those buses that don’t show (thanks again, Mercury). 

This is what I do. What do you do? (Not talking about your job, BTW)

Last Saturday I woke up early, basking in the delicious joy that comes from having absolutely no plans. The

house was empty, silent. I did my meditation, my oil pulling, brushed my teeth and headed to the park with just my keys, a pen and a notebook. There was a gentle breeze flirting with my ponytail and the trill of cockatoos squabbling over territory. The light was muted, the day still withholding its secrets. I sat cross-legged in the dewy grass and watched the eager dogs and their less-eager owners. I listened to the water slapping the seawall and the bitter sigh of running shoes doing time. I felt wider than my skin, as if the emotional rigours and quenchless demands of the past week had been experienced by someone else. I opened my notebook and wrote. Not work pitches nor blog posts nor notes-to-self, but a fictional short story that has been gnawing at my imagination for weeks, urging me to sit still long enough to bring it to life. What I wrote was neither good nor clever, nor even finished. But, as with any meaningful endeavour, the product matters less than the process. Whenever I am writing something that doesn’t have a deadline, prescribed format or specified word count, I am where I am supposed to be. My soul rises up and the would-have-should-have-could-have in my brain falls away. This is what I do to feel like me. To feel right. 

For me, writing is coming back home. I know with absolute certainty that telling stories and playing with words are what I am here to do. I hope you have something that brings you back into alignment with your soul, too, and I hope you value yourself enough to make that a priority.

What are you doing with your time that could possibly matter more?