121. Add this One Habit for Peace of Mind

 “A good idea will keep you awake during the morning, but a great idea will keep you awake during the night.” -Marilyn Vos Savant 

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This episode is all about cultivating the habit of Wonder and Awe - feelings that drastically improve our well being. Cultivating these feelings brings about joy, creativity, humility, empathy, and a connection to the wider world. 

Transcript

 “A good idea will keep you awake during the morning, but a great idea will keep you awake during the night.” This quote by Marilyn Vos Savant starts us off today, and we are going to be talking about a lot of really great ideas. 

Join the retreat here: https://moderncreativewoman.com

I'm so glad you're here on this audio creativity journey. I'm Dr. Amy Backos, I am your hostess on the Modern Creative Woman podcast. Let's get into this. Let's get this started. Speaking of great ideas, I'm really excited to share with you an idea that I've been working on for quite a while, and it's finally ready to share with you. And I have a special little bonus for the podcast listeners. I'm super excited to tell you about the modern creative Woman fall in person retreat! We are live in San Francisco and the date is October 11th. This is an incredible opportunity for you to bypass those self-critical judgments that often show up for women and reveal a creative, radiant authenticity. By the time you walk out the door, you will be in touch with your natural creativity. And perhaps it's been lying dormant for way too long. This retreat is designed to be a supportive community of women, and if you're tired of fatigue and overwhelm or tension, that just won't go away. And perhaps you've tried to commit to changes and you've let yourself down in the past. Now is the time to really deepen your relationship with yourself and other women in the community. And it's going to be through using the tools to design the way you want your strategies to work best for you. This is a completely personalized experience. I'll be teaching you the art and science, and you'll have the opportunity in the different workshops to practice and being your creative, authentic self. And let's face it, things are pretty stressful and pretty tense right now. There's a lot of inundation that we're experiencing on social media in the news, and it's pretty negative. This is a space to be able to recharge and go back out and be the woman that you want to be in the midst of all of this chaos. I think this is a perfect opportunity for our therapists and therapists as well, who would like to engage in a really unique kind of self-care, as well as pick up some things that you can use with clients. This is not therapy, though. This is called identity by design, and it's really the most unique kind of in-person retreat. And I've been dreaming of it for a really long time. This is definitely for women who are struggling with perfectionism, procrastination, self-critical thoughts, freezing up when they're wanting to make change. And it's also for every single one of us who internalizes the social pressures to be or act or look a certain way. And we want to get around that and make a different way of experiencing our life. And through all of this, we become much, much better at taking care of the people who depend on us. So if you are interested in joining this retreat, now is the time. Spots are definitely limited. We are Focused really on creativity, neuro aesthetics, art therapy. And essentially you'll be experiencing visualizations, art, community conversations, and you'll leave feeling completely different, refreshed, recharged, and very conscious of what it looks like to make changes. The obstacles that get in our way and how we can work around them. So these are great tools for you to tap into your creativity. So October 11th, it's in San Francisco. It's a daylong workshop and I have early bird pricing right now. It is 529 for the whole day. It includes your lunch, your morning coffee, afternoon tea. And if you're booking before September 15th, you can have this early bird, right. It is also for the podcast listeners I have an extra bonus. So this is not going out to the email list. This is just for all of you. And what I'm offering is if you go ahead and register now before September 15th, you can have a month inside the Modern Creative Woman membership. So if you want to jump in and get started for this September workshops. Sign up now because those start next week. Or if you sign up before September 15th, you can either join the September 1st and just watch the videos, or you can join the October 1st so you get a whole month inside the membership. You get to peek around, see what the archives look like, and you get to be a part of this month's community engagement and the experience of being with a group of women and doing art in a way that can really transform you, and thinking about art as a creative, soulful practice that enriches your life. And it's available for all of us. It is unnecessary to be an artist in any way, shape or form, and you may have not picked up crayons or paints since elementary school. And that's okay. You are absolutely welcome and you're in the right spot. So go ahead and register. And then you want to send me a direct message or an email and let me know that you're using the podcast bonus. And then I will personally get you inside the membership for the month. It's a $97 value, and it is yours free for being a podcast member and a participant in the workshop, I will drop all the information in the notes below, and I really believe that this is the opportunity for all of us come together and engage in creativity and the power of pulling ourselves forward together, not trying to do it all by ourselves, but really investing in our community and having fun, of course, and being creative. I will see you there. There is a set of emotions that we are not so often using, and we're going to talk about them today because they are exactly what we need in these really hectic times. We need these two particular emotions to guide us in making change. Taking action. Being of service to ourselves, our families, our communities. It is how we stay refreshed and recharged. And if you're out in the world doing a lot of service work or advocacy work, it's a recipe for burnout. If we're not using our rest and our emotions to balance out the labor that we're doing. If you are a mom and you're doing the same thing every day, kind of rinse and repeat, these are the emotions that will help you find meaning and purpose in what sometimes feels so repetitive that you start to lose track of day after day. Have you guessed what these emotions are? As I was describing it, I had another emotion that came to mind that you might be thinking of. But the emotions that I'm focusing on today are wonder. And or the other one that I thought of was gratitude. And I've talked so much about gratitude. You can grab your gratitude journal. Link is in the show notes, and using gratitude is a day to day experience that will transform every instance of your life. However, wonder and awe are emotions that sometimes emerge spontaneously when we see something beautiful or vast, something new that is exciting. That doesn't happen as often as we wish it would though. So I want to talk to you about cultivating these emotions and wonder and awe are these essential emotions. They're available to us and we can cultivate them. When you think about those emotions, they are associated with it being connected to something larger than ourselves. And it's really the idea that we are having a human experience and we can be impressed by it. We can feel something incredible about those moments that fill us with inspiration. So let me describe a little bit more about what wonder or Not is. It's often inspired by nature. Every time I walk up to Twin Peaks, it's the highest point in San Francisco, and I look east in the direction of the San Francisco Bay, and I look across the city and the bay all the way to Mount Diablo. When it's a clear day, I can see that far, and it's awe inspiring. It feels so incredible to be way up on top of a hill and see, so far the vista is amazing and I am always pleased to be there. We can also be inspired by human achievements. When we watch the Olympics, we can be overcome with emotion and feel so impressed and feel proud of what the athletes are doing and if they represent our country, we can extend that pride. There's something amazing about watching an athlete perform, and especially at peak levels. Wonder and awe also shows up when we come across abstract ideas that make a huge impact on our life. And I'll give you one example. When I went to college, I learned the word paradigm, and all of a sudden it was like I could see so much more. I understood at 18 in this sociology class that I was taking, that there were multiple perspectives from which to view. Anything, and that I understood that you and I might have a different perspective, or different cultures might have a different perspective. But this word paradigm meant that anything was open to being seen in a different way. And I thought, oh my gosh, I could look at the same piece of art that I looked at yesterday with a fresh paradigm and see it in a completely different way. I could understand something about politics in a completely different way, because now understanding about paradigms, what the underlying beliefs are of someone, has a big impact on how they perceive, interpret and act on whatever's happening politically. But it also applied immediately to myself and my brain. I could suddenly understand why one day I liked something and felt in a good mood, and the next day I felt in a bad mood and I didn't like the same thing. I could picture myself with paradigm sunglasses on different set of lenses depending on my mood, and a different set of lenses depending on who is viewing the art. It gave me a framework. Just knowing that word gave me a framework that completely transformed how I understood the work that I would be doing for the rest of my career. It's a very postmodern idea to think there's many perspectives, but to be able to see it clearly and understand it for myself inside my brain and how I viewed the world, as well as how others experience the world, was so helpful. And you may know that word and did not at all have that reaction to the word paradigm. It's simply a way of looking at things, a lens through which we view what's in front of us. But in that moment, I had such a clear memory of sitting in that class. And so that was a moment of wonder and awe that helped my studies tremendously. Experiencing wonder and awe impacts our well-being. It's pretty clear that when we climb to the top of a hill and have a look at the scenery, it feels good. But cultivating this emotion is really good for our mental health. Let me tell you why wonder in art are so important because they lower stress and anxiety. So pulling up these feelings helps us feel better. They also increase our creativity, wonder, and to improve our thinking, speed and our processing. And my favorite, it fosters joy. It's so delightful to experience those moments. Kelly Givens says, I believe there are certain habits that, if practiced, will stimulate the growth of humble roots in our lives. One of those is a habit of awe and wonder, and I hope you heard the. The language of this is a habit. It's an action that we take to cultivate this feeling. Kelly Gibbons goes on to say that the regular practice of paying careful attention to the world around us gives us that feeling of wonder and awe. It's not merely seeing, but observing. It's about perceiving. It's about considering. It also includes asking really thoughtful questions to ourselves about what we're experiencing in our emotions and in our body. So what we're seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, touching. What is it about those experiences in that moment that gives us so much pleasure? I want to invite a little more emotion into this conversation. Love and curiosity. And there's a personality variable called Open to Experience. And we'll talk about that maybe in a next episode. The idea of being open to experience allows more feeling, more wonder, more awe and love and curiosity have a lot to do with it. If we can attend to something with love and curiosity, then we're cultivating these feel good emotions. How often do you eat something without hardly tasting it at all? Do you ever stand in the kitchen and eat crackers? Probably don't even know how many you ate. So I did that at lunch without even really tasting what I was eating. And then I remembered that's not a good way to eat. So I put them on a plate and sat down. How often do you look without seeing? Ever get highway hypnosis where you're driving to the same place you always drive, and suddenly you're there and you don't even remember driving? We're missing the opportunity to be in the present moment. Have love and curiosity. Mindfulness. Often. Do you hear without listening? Either someone you talk to on a regular basis. Maybe the radio. A song you've heard a million times. You don't really listen. You just kind of tune it out. And these experiences of trying to just get through something. Me trying to, like, get through a snack real quick is losing track of the moment. If I'm driving with that highway hypnosis and I suddenly am where I'm trying to get to, I'm losing track of the moment and I'm missing opportunities to engage and experience wonder and awe. It is unnecessary to climb up to the top of a hill and look at a beautiful vista, to have the experience of wonder and awe. or you might notice a shadow in a puddle when you're driving. You might hear a song in a completely new way if you're paying attention to it. That opportunity for wonder and awe is always there. And remember, Givens describes it as an habit. It's an action. It's a habit that we engage with. Are we looking for something to find interesting? You can drive by the tree or you can look at the tree and it is pretty amazing if you stop and look at a tree. So these small moments of cultivating wonder and awe give us this chance to experience the world in a different way. And back to what I started with a really good idea to cultivate these emotions. Right now, when things are stressful on the outside, one way that you can cultivate some wonder and awe today is to do some admiring. Pull out a piece of artwork that you've made and admire it. When we're admiring and using our imagination, we're able to receive the beauty of the world, and it comes to us in a regular and intentional way. When we're able to focus on admiring something, admiring another person. You can look at your friend and say, are you so beautiful? You can look at your own hand and say, oh, my hand is so many years old and it served me well. Look out the window and appreciate that the sun has risen and the birds are singing. Wonder and awe is the habit, and admiring is the action that gets us there. So you can admire your paint set and find real beauty in what it looks like. If you have a palette that you work with, you've got lots of paints on it. That's really beautiful. You could take a photo of it and really look at it later, admire it. So remember, admiring is the habit of a wonder filled person. Wander, ignore also lead to the very best kind of humility. It's recognizing that we're just a small part of the very vast universe, and that recognition frees us up from judging ourselves and judging others. It helps us let go of and ease time anxiety. You know, the worry that you have to. Hurry up. Let's go. I'm late. Don't waste my time or anything like that. It feels better to know that we're part of a great big cosmos, and the idea of rushing becomes less and less important when we're in contact with wonder or not. I wonder if not also dissenters us. And what I mean by that is we don't keep thinking we're the center of the universe anymore. We recognize many paradigms, many ways of looking at things. We understand and appreciate others and their beauty and their positioning in the cosmos. The bigger picture. Humility is a key variable in getting along with other people, understanding other people, and engaging in meaningful relationships. I'm not talking about dismissing or diminishing your accomplishments. It's not that kind of humility. I'm talking about the kind that's thinking of the big wide world, wonder or not, also opens our imaginations, and it moves us from our own opinions to consider these things that are far greater than us and so much bigger than us. Remember when I learned that word paradigm, wonder and awe expand the limit of paradigms. We suddenly understand that it's unlimited wonder and to also reinforce our curiosity and our creativity. It increases empathy. That's huge. That's exactly what we need right now in the world, lowers our anxieties. Just the idea of being less self-absorbed lowers our anxieties. It lets us admit that we don't know something, and it helps us grow more humble. So you can go cultivate some wonder and awe. Looking at your own artwork, looking at the artwork of others, or just looking out the window or going for a walk and going slow. It's a visual, tactile, emotional experience and it also can be cognitive. Thoughts like I appreciate this. This is possible. Exclaiming what beauty or. Wow, look at this! Noticing when you're curious about something. All of those are leading us towards the experience of wonder and awe. One thing you can do is replace worry with wonder and awe, and you can imagine yourself in this exact moment, right where you are now. Just having a look around and tapping into the idea that you can be grateful to be alive. You can be grateful for whatever you're seeing, no matter what it is, you can find beauty in it. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry says true happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, and the zest of creating things new and creating things new is creating a different emotion, a different way of perceiving things. It's trying on a different paradigm so that you can start to appreciate that you don't have to hold up everything that you're able to be part of the great big cosmic journey. I'll get into some more of the research on wonder and awe in the next couple of episodes, and I think you'll be really convinced about how cultivating this emotion can help you feel better. Let me know how you cultivate wonder and awe. I would love to hear from you. I so appreciate all your DMs and Instagram, and you can always drop me a message in the show notes here. So now that you know, what will you create? I want to remind you to check out the Identity by Design in Person retreat here in San Francisco on October 11th. And remember, after you sign up, send me a DM and let me know that you want to take advantage of the extra secret bonus only for podcast listeners to have a month inside the modern, creative woman and our incredible workshops. I cannot wait to speak with you in the next episode.