Monica Parker
speaker
42 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Monica Parker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Because it's really an incredibly beneficial emotion both psychologically and physiologically. And what's really fascinating to me is there appears to be a direct biological pathway between wonder and better health.
Hi, Mike. Thanks so much for having me.
Yeah, so wonder is a fascinating word. It's sort of something of a shapeshifter. So we have wonder that is the verb to wonder, which might be how we described curiosity. But there's also wonder that's the noun, which would be a catalyst for, say, the emotion of awe. And so my definition of wonder is really connecting these two concepts into curiosity.
a single emotional experience that starts with openness, moves into curiosity, then absorption and awe. And it's really almost even a cycle because each time we experience one of these components, the more likely we are to experience them in the future.
Yeah, because it's really an incredibly beneficial emotion, both psychologically and physiologically. It makes us more creative, more desirous of studying the world around us. It makes us more humble, less materialistic, more generous, better community members, people who are higher in the component. Elements of wonder tend to have healthier relationships. They perform better in school and work.
And what's really, really fascinating to me is the physiological benefits. What we found is that there appears to be a direct biological pathway between wonder and better health because it lowers what are known as our pro-inflammatory cytokines, which are markers of inflammation and connected to things like heart disease and Alzheimer's.
It also lowers our blood pressure and our cortisol levels, which are our stress hormones. So really, really positive for us, for both our brains and our minds.
Absolutely, and that is wonder. And even one of the things that I like to tell people is to try to approach life like a child. As a child, they're always adding new experiences and what are known as schema. So they're basically building the lens through which they see the world. And one of the challenges is that as we become adults, we sort of have decided we already have
all the information we need, and we decide that there's not so much wonder to be seen anymore. But if we can see the world through the eyes of a child, always beginning, almost that Zen precept of to always be beginning, then we are able to recapture that sense of childlike wonder.
I can appreciate sort of that take, but the reality is that I think that's a perception that we have because there is so much to feel a sense of wonder about. And there's no question we can't see Mickey Mouse again for the first time. We can't see the Grand Canyon for the first time except once. But what research shows is that we can, if we choose to see it, find wonder in the quotidian.
We can find it in our day-to-day lives. And that might be just a perfect sunrise or a beautiful autumn leaf, but really it's about the lens through which we choose to see the world. It's about a mindset.
But what the research shows is that if we prime ourselves to find wonder, and it can be a single sentence prime, I'm going to find three things to feel a sense of wonder about today, then our brain will commit greater cognitive resources to finding it.
And so certainly priming can help, but over time as it becomes a practice, neurons that fire together wire together and will start to create these neural pathways where we will recognize wonder more often. I don't see it as onerous. I simply see it as another thing that is good for us and fun to do.
So one of the main ways is it's something that psychologists call small self. So anything that we experience that feels a sense of vastness, and that can be a sense of emotional vastness or cognitive vastness, where we say, goodness, this makes me feel like a small component part of a bigger system. That's really how we start to tap into wonder.
And that's where we start to get the benefits of wonder, where we get that that neuroplasticity where we start to feel pro-social emotions, which are the helping emotions like compassion and empathy. And so really, if we have that experience and consider where we as a human connect into this bigger cosmos of the world, that's where we start to feel that sense of wonder.
yeah it's really just to say this makes me feel small this experience is so big that it makes me feel small and that idea of small self to to appreciate the the immensity of that moment and not to become habituated to say, oh, well, there's a sunrise every day. It's not a big deal. Instead to say, look at this incredible opportunity we have for another day.
Look at the beauty, how it changes all the time. To have that sense of vastness is really where we're able to connect and then say, but that makes me feel small. And when we feel smaller, it makes our problems feel smaller. It makes us connect to other people more deeply. And so really, it's that opportunity to say that I am only a small piece of such a bigger, magical puzzle.
That is probably one of the main components, absolutely, that sense of small self. There are other aspects of it, certainly being absorbed, being fully present, not trying to, really trying to shut down that chattering mind that we all have. So that's one of those things as well, if we can, actually be present in the moment and not be thinking about, well, what's our to-do list for that week?
Other ways we can do that, of course, is by deep curiosity to explore in our own minds the cognitive elements or the intellectual elements of what we're experiencing. But really probably one of the key pieces is that smallness.
Sure, and there's an expression that says, after the ecstasy, the laundry. There's no question that there's life that we have to deal with and that this is a moment in time. But there are ways that we can extend and deepen the impact that it has.
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