This podcast talks about how to develop a sense of wonder. By developing a sense of childlike wonder, we can look at the world with new eyes. Based on the work of Sean Fargo. Music by Clemens Ruh - 'Days of Wonder'.
PLEASE READ - Terms of Use: https://www.nextpixprods.com/terms-of-use.html
Note that Don Thompson is now available as a coach or mentor on an individual basis. To find out more, please go to his website www.nextpixprods.com, and use the 'contact' form to request additional information.
This podcast talks about how to develop a sense of wonder. By developing a sense of childlike wonder, we can look at the world with new eyes. Based on the work of Sean Fargo. Music by Clemens Ruh - 'Days of Wonder'.
PLEASE READ - Terms of Use: https://www.nextpixprods.com/terms-of-use.html
Note that Don Thompson is now available as a coach or mentor on an individual basis. To find out more, please go to his website www.nextpixprods.com, and use the 'contact' form to request additional information.
Speaker 1:
Hi, this is another podcast for you today, and what I'd like to talk about today is engendering or cultivating a sense of childlike wonder, and what that means by childlike wonder. It really has to do with having a certain attitude, a certain feeling about life, more of a sense of innocence about life, about things, and most of us have a hard time coming to this place because we do feel a sense of lingering regrets or a sense of lingering guilt perhaps, about things we've done in the past. And what we're inviting with this practice is to let go of that and to be able to transcend it, you might say, and just enter into this place, a space of innocence, and I do believe it exists. Certainly, we can look at children, we know that they're innocent, we can watch them play and they move from one thing to another innocently, without attachment. Of course, there are certain issues with that related to the adult world. We can't always behave like that in the adult world, but still I think it's informative and helpful for us to consider what we can learn from children and what we can learn from having a childlike attitude of innocence, and the bottom line here is that children are far, much more attuned to their environment than most adults. They revel really in the wonder of everything around them.
Speaker 1:
When you look at children, you just notice this. So by harnessing our own childlike capacity for this sense of wonder or innocence, for presence and curiosity, what we're doing is we're shutting off our autopilot attention to our environment in a way that's sort of negative or a way that layers it with a certain perspective that is, you might say, more judgmental, and we're shutting that off and we're looking at the environment in more of an innocent way. And so I'm going to step through a practice and we'll use this as a springboard, you might say, to trying to find this childlike sense of wonder. So I invite you to just take a moment to pause. Wherever you are you can be seated, you can be standing, you can be lying down and I invite you to close your eyes and then to invite your open and curious inner child to come to the surface. We all have this child within us. We were there. This child that existed when we were children and we were innocent is still there and we can invite it into our consciousness.
Speaker 1:
Now, when you open your eyes again, just imagine that you're experiencing everything around you for the first time, as you would if looking at life as a child, and then, just for the next few minutes, you can scan your environment as you cherish it with the state of mind, and you can notice things like the colors, the textures, the smells, whatever surrounds you. You can feel the earth, you can feel the chair you're sitting in, the bed you're sitting on or whatever surface is beneath you. You can feel it and you can sense any movement. If you're walking about, perhaps there's the wind moving through the trees and you can hold your attention on one particular object that captures your attention, something that pleases your senses, and then you can consider what is about this that brings a sense of happiness, contentment or peace to me. What unique properties or characteristics does it have? So now, after focusing on this thing, just for a few moments or a minute or so, you can just note how you feel in your mind and your body. So you can repeat this exercise in a variety of locations at a different point during the day.
Speaker 1:
The idea is to bring a sense of newness, a sense of freshness to whatever it is you're experiencing. You can be in your house and you can realize that your house and your environment and where you live is, in a sense, an idea. If you look at it as a child looks at it, it's just new, it's just fresh. There's a sense of wonder. You can see things that you didn't see before. You might take a walk and you have a standard walk that you take. Maybe you get caught up in your own thought process as you walk. Maybe you wear a headset and you listen to music. Maybe you can take the headset off and try to walk a different way, without the music, and you can just observe what's around you.
Speaker 1:
So the idea with this practice is that you are allowing yourself a sense of wonder and a sense of newness, to see things in a different way and to really contemplate that in a mindful way, to contemplate it in a way that's purposeful. In other words, you're looking at the world in a sense with purpose, but the purpose is to be able to let go of your preconceptions about it. And if you let go of your preconceptions about who you are, where you are, what you are, you can look at the world as if you are a child and you can have a sense of playfulness about it. You know more so, and of course you know in the real world, that's, the human adult world.
Speaker 1:
There are, of course, practical limitations to this, and I'm not suggesting you go into your boss's office and do this practice.
Speaker 1:
But at the same time, you can take, you know, maybe a minute at work and just look around and see things with a fresh perspective, see your colleagues with a fresh perspective, and not try to limit themselves or not try to limit yourself in terms of what you can be. You can be kinder, you can be less cynical, perhaps you can have more of a sense of innocence about anything. So I'll leave the podcast at that. This is, I believe, a great practice, a wonderful practice and something that can take us back to this sense of childlike wonder which we so often will lose as we get older.
Speaker 1:
And we can take a step back and look at our surroundings mindfully, wherever we're at, and have this childlike sense of wonder and this sense of newness. Then, with that, we can have more energy. We can have more energy and, just as a child that has a lot of energy, they have tons of energy. Well, maybe this is one of the reasons is you're not so caught up in becoming attached to a particular way of looking at things that happens later in their life. So thank you again and, as always, I look forward to the next podcast. Talk to you soon, bye, bye.