The Power of Wonder in Optimal Health
Here in my blog, we talk a lot about diet, exercise, toxins, stress levels, and how toxic people and environments affect your health. I share all of my best tips on how to overcome issues and realign your health, but there is something that is so powerful in your quest for optimal health that I cannot state it enough:
It is your thoughts.
You see, your thoughts really affect your overall health. They have the power to heal you or destroy your health. From your thoughts come your decisions, which affect your actions, which will eventually affect your health. So you want to make sure you are taking good care of your thoughts.
“Easier said than done,” you are probably thinking. In this day and time, I understand that.
Let me re-introduce to you something you already innately know, something you have known since you were a child:
The art and practice of wonderment.
Without wonderment, it is impossible to obtain quality health.
As a child, wonder came naturally to us. We were thrilled with the smallest thing, finding total amazement in a raindrop, a bubble, and taking a step.
As an adult now, wonder can be described as the art of not being bothered by chaos, the government, toxic people, or other stressors in our environment.
When it comes to physical health, wonderment is extremely important.
I cannot state enough that how you think is so important to your health, so take a moment to consider, what are your thoughts?
What thoughts go through your mind when that person cut you off? Did you immediately find your stress levels rising and find your mouth spewing words you wished you could retract while children were in the backseat, or did you go, “Huh? That poor guy must have been in a hurry. I hope everything’s okay.”
Your thoughts are so powerful in your health.
People have lost wonderment. Why? Again, and only as an observer, I feel it’s the everyday stresses and demands that overpower our vision and senses and places us in the daily grind of survival. Stresses, jobs, relationships, money issues, all these things become horse blinders.
Our vision and outlook are narrowed. We focus on the next paycheck, our current problems at work, the future, you name it.
Whatever your personal reason may be, these thoughts may have consumed you and taken your wonder with it. It’s happened to me, and it still happens to me. It happens to all of us.
But we have to get our thoughts back to health, too. We have to get back to wonderment.
How do we do that?
First, let’s look at what wonderment is.
Wonderment is the act of amazement, awe, and wonder. Synonyms for this verb include astonishment, amazement, bewilderment, fascination, and surprise. It is the need to find the everyday, the mundane, the ordinary, and the repetitive in a new light of mystery, enthrallment, and rapture.
Wonderment is also being able to embrace the childlike sense of awe and being amazed by simple things.
My own baby girl has helped teach me what wonder really is.
My daughter is fascinated with the character Shrek. In the movie, he is a giant green ogre. To her, he is the spitting image of a stuffed monkey, and she calls him “Monkey.”
Every night, my daughter and I play after dinner and discuss her toys. Then when she gets sleepy she gets a deliberate grin on her little face and her eyes look up as she tilts her head, then says “Monkey? Watch Monkey?” meaning watch the movie Shrek. She does this every night, and we watch the movie, nightly. That is an example of practicing wonderment.
I am not a mental health professional per se, but I have worked with thousands of patients and know optimal health is not possible without wonderment.
My daughter has taught me more in the first two years of life than all my years of schooling and all the books I’ve read.
Why is that? Because I understand unconditional love now for the first time, by learning to look at life through the eyes of a child.
G.K. Chesterton wrote he learned more about life by observing children than he ever did by reading the works of philosophers. He was right.
The ability for us adults to view life through the eyes of a child is so important for optimal health.
It’s perspective that allows wonder. Gain perspective. If you were stripped of all your worldly goods, both assets and liabilities, what’s left? I’ll tell you: your health, family, friends, relationships, and an absolutely beautiful world to live in. Green grass, majestic mountains, inspiring sunrises, awesome storms, beauty in everything you can behold.
Even manmade beauty in skyscrapers, large buildings and computers are wonderful. The ability to obtain wonderment is right outside your door. Look for it, get inspired by it, become awestruck by it, become awestruck by everything around you.
Become amazed by simple things. Think of what it took to build the building you’re sitting in right now. Think of the sky. How high is it? Why is it blue? There are of course answers to a lot of these questions, but let an astrophysicist tell you how high the sky is yet maintain your wonderment with its beauty.
One way to truly prevent boredom from setting in is by developing wonderment. Find a thrill in the everyday.
Why do you think grandparents love their grandbabies so much? Because of the family heritage? Maybe. The answer for someone lacking wonderment, I think, is because they bring back wonderment, joy, simplicity, and thoughtfulness.
One of my favorite writers, Ravi Zacharias, has shared, and I paraphrase here, that exhilaration alone is not sufficient to find lasting fulfillment. Yet undeniably, wonder plays a role in satisfying our hunger for meaning…for a child, meaning is gained by her recognition of the awe-inspiring reality that surrounds her life.
In terms of optimal health, youth is restored when youth is sought out. I cannot stress enough to my clients, or to you, the reader in this case, your quest for ultimate and lasting health will be stopped in its tracks unless wonderment is allowed back into your life.
Here are some simple steps to rediscovering wonderment:
Look up, not around.
Question everything.
Become amazed by simple things.
Find some children to play with.
Gain perspective.
And remember, nothing is worth not being happy and healthy.
So, that is wonderment. Again, it is absolutely impossible to obtain health without it. The entire RecoverMe philosophy banks on wonderment as we look at all aspects of your health to help you survive day to day.
Gandhi said, “Let your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values and your values become your destiny.”
Your quest for ultimate and lasting health will be stopped in its tracks unless wonderment is allowed back into your life. Get it back by seeking it out daily. Your body, your mind, your emotions, your friends will all thank you.
Listen to my RecoverMe Podcast Episode 14 HERE to learn more about my proven approach to naturally healthy living through topics like wonderment and much, much more.
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