Growing Younger: Developing a Fresh Mindset in a Stagnant World
The older I’ve become the more I’ve cultivated a mindset of curiosity — one of utilizing my imagination to see what isn’t readily apparent to find joy and satisfaction on a daily basis.
“We see the world, not as it is, but as we are──or, as we are conditioned to see it.”― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Iam 2 hours into my 5 hour drive, and after drinking an iced latte and bottle of water, I pull off to stop at one of the few rest stops off highway I-10. After parking my car, I sit for a second to finish a chapter in my current audiobook Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. These long drives become a bit monotonous traversing over the infinitely flat terrain of Texas, so the rest stops offer a needed respite.
As I step out of the car though, I notice something super unique. I glimpse up at the sky, and I see a cloud that looks identical to an Apatosaurus which I had just learned about at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. I stand in awe for a while just appreciating how amazing it is and how refreshing it is to have a small break.
Awe — Challenging Our Worldview
Why is this moment noteworthy? It’s simply like any other moment except with a slight pause and a weird looking cloud. However, these are the best moments. Ones that help us see past daily stress to view what this world truly has to offer. That is awe.
Awe is something that doesn’t get enough credit. It’s so simple, can be found anywhere, and has the power to lift us out of ourselves to feel gratitude and appreciation for life and the power of being. According to the Greater Good Center at UC Berkeley: “Awe is the feeling we get in the presence of something vast that challenges our understanding of the world, like looking up at millions of stars in the night sky or marveling at the birth of a child.”
How to Experience Awe
There are a couple ways we can experience awe. One is we can sit and wait for it to come to us through extraordinary events that grasp our attention, or the other is to seek out awe. The former can take ages because of how rare these grandiose events are, but why wait when we have the power to initiate the latter whenever we choose.
Experiencing awe isn’t something I learned from school. Rather it is a product of my daily practice of patience, presence, and imagination, something everyone can cultivate with only a few minutes a day.
The benefits of awe range from clear thinking and close relationships to instantaneous relief from stress, so learning how to utilize this tool can help us shed the stress load we can carry around all day and bring us back to the present moment where pure enjoyment lives.
1 — Presence: Right here, right now
To begin intentionally experiencing awe, I started practicing mindfulness. Initially, I would do 1 minute guided meditations, then I slowly progressed to 2 minutes, then 5 minutes and now, each day, I use the app Headspace to practice guided meditation for 10 minutes. Initially, I thought meditation was simply to help me relax and clear my mind directly following the act, however, after a conversation with a sport and performance psychologist working with the Air Force, I learned that this practice is actually developing the skill of mindfulness that we can use on command.
This means if I feel the trigger of being stressed or overwhelmed at any point during the day, I can recognize the signs of stress then activate my parasympathetic nervous system to calm down (primarily by using breath work, body scanning, and widening my vision to counteract tunnel vision). For me, I learned that when I’m stressed, I hold my breath, clench my fists, and tighten my neck and face. When I recognize these biological signs, I begin to breathe and focus on my body to overcome these sensations.
When utilizing mindfulness to become present and experience awe, start by focusing on your breathing, I like counting my breaths to ensure I’m wholly focused. Then, feel your body. Start at your head and move all the way down to your toes, feeling the contact between your body and your clothes or of the seat underneath you. This mindfulness practice won’t completely clear year mind of distracting thoughts. Instead, after scanning your body, use your breath as a place to come back to as your thoughts pass by like the clouds through the sky.
Mindfulness is a tool that can help us come back to the present moment. This is important because without being focused on the present, we won’t be able to be patient, the second component of awe.
2 — Patience: Finding Comfort in Doing Nothing
Patience and presence go hand in hand. Usually, patience is a result of presence, but you can have one without the other. Many times in my life, I have practiced patience by becoming disconnected from reality and using my phone to distract me. This is not the patience that will lead to awe. Instead, the patience that is needed is that of a comfort with not doing anything except observing the world. Leave the phone inside, and be comfortable doing absolutely nothing.
Even if you have somewhere to be in 10 minutes, let that appointment leave your mind momentarily. I like to set a timer to remind me when to come back, so I don’t need to be thinking about it. To let go of everything and do nothing, you can go on a walk, look out the window, or simply just broaden your view to take in all of the room around you, just don’t pick up your phone or laptop. Become present and be okay with not working or doing anything for a brief period of time.
Look around you, what do you see? Is there anything new there? Ask yourself questions like this. How can you view your environment with fresh eyes? How can you appreciate your surroundings?
After you practice presence for a while, patience will more easily come to you, but you don’t need to wait for patience to come. Start practicing it by letting go of your responsibilities and commitments for a few minutes at a time. Write down your to-dos, where you left off on your work, and set a timer for when you need to come back. This break will allow you the mental freedom required to relax and more easily encounter awe.
The difference between patience and presence is the practice of it. Presence in this context focuses on being mindful of yourself while patience takes that presence outside of yourself to your surroundings.
3 — Imagination: Creating a New Reality
Imagination brings together presence and patience to create awe. Now that you’ve become present and aware of your surroundings, take a moment to appreciate and be grateful for what is around you. Think about how long it took for the trees on your walk to grow or how many storms they’ve been through and are still standing. Think about how incredible it is that we have touch screens and tv’s that will project anything we can imagine directly in front of us at any time. Think about how big the universe is and how lucky we are to be alive. Or, simply think about how small a blade of grass is, and that’s it.
Imagination uses the best parts of our mind to attach experience to possibility. Utilizing your imagination will give you a new perspective on the world. It will allow you to look at a scene and see it from a new perspective. It will make you let go of your preconceived notions, your stereotypes, and your expectations and see something for what it truly is or what it could be rather than what it should be.
Imagination truly is the bow that wraps the gift of this planet together and makes it worth experiencing, so take a moment today and use your imagination to change your perspective and change how you view something that you have probably passed by a thousand times.
Awe is a skill we can learn from kids. If you have children, little siblings or nephews, or friends with kids, take a moment to see how they experience the world. Usually, it is in the simplest way possible. Kids find enjoyment in something as small as a leaf not because that leaf could make them money or get them a bigger house but because it’s a leaf and that’s it. That is awe at work. Although children have the advantage of experiencing the world for the first time, we aren’t as attuned and aware of the world around us as we’d like to believe. There is so much out there that we haven’t experienced yet, so much out there that we have experienced but could experience a different way, and so much out there that we can make better as part of our experience. Many of which is right in front of us, but we have been too blind to see. Until now.
It is a simple equation: Awe = Presence + Patience + Imagination
To many, doing these 5 hour drives is unimaginably boring. To me, it is quite enjoyable because it has helped me learn how to derive happiness and enjoyment from where I currently am rather than from specific material objects or places. Essentially, enjoying the journey rather than the destination.
Awe has assisted in this by helping me see the world with a fresh mindset. It has given me perspective and helped me change for the better. It is common to hear that the world is moving so rapidly with technology and the internet, but I would argue that we don’t experience that speed on a daily basis.
To me, I am so enveloped in the minutiae of daily to-do lists that my world feels quite stagnant regardless of what I see on the news. Because of this, I seek travel and books to broaden my perspective and continue to grow and learn. Using patience, presence, imagination, and consequentially awe, reduces the need for big changes to solve my problems. Awe uses small, attainable acts to bring about a relief that I can carry further into my day, my year, and my life. Awe gives me a vacation every day, and isn’t that what we’re all searching for?
What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children, life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don’t see the world, don’t observe the world, don’t contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don’t distinguish between it and their own selves. Not until … a distance appears between what they are and what the world is, does the question arise: what makes life worth living? — Karl Ove Knausgård
Thanks for joining me on this journey. I’d love to hear your awe-inspiring stories too. Please share them in the comments.
