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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Appearances
Simply by taking time to recognize it, while it might not have felt like it changed you, the research would show that that does linger, that that has a longer term benefit than just that moment. But also there are other ways that we can help extend that.
If you were to share that experience with someone else and say, I saw this incredible double rainbow, then you're basically telling your brain to experience it again. If you were to journal about it or write about it, then you would have that additional experience once again. And so there are ways that we can extend that experience or magnify it.
And there absolutely is research that shows that wonder shared is wonder multiplied.
It's not a have to, it's a choice if that's something that helps you connect to it. Everybody has a different way that they connect to wonder. And so if for you, you want it to be ephemeral, you feel that for you wonder is something that is rare and fleeting, then that can be the way that you experience wonder. Those can be your wonder bringers.
For other people, they want to have that experience be multiplied. And so they want to share it or they want to journal about it. And we do know that having Those opportunities to journal or to share it with other people does extend that experience, but it's really very personal. And so for you, if you want it to be rare and fleeting, then it can be, but it will still have a positive impact.
And you've just perfectly encapsulated how wonder shared is wonder multiplied. Even though those people perhaps didn't know that they were sharing that experience with you, you were sharing it with them. And by watching them experience it, you got that little dose of it as if you were experiencing it again for the first time.
And so I think that's a perfect example of one of the reasons why we love to have these wonder experiences together, why people go to church as a group, why people like to enjoy music and gigs as a group, because that sense of wonder, that sense of awe, that sense of exploration and discovery can be shared. And it has an impact then that is greater than the sum of its parts.
I think that I can appreciate why people would think that and even the original folks who were studying this. So if we go back to even Maslow, his idea of a peak experience is really a wonder experience. And Maslow believed that peak experiences were rare and fleeting. But towards the end of his life, he believed that in fact, we could find them quite frequently.
Some of the all researchers also in the beginning believed that awe was always only rare and fleeting, but now they've found that those rare and fleeting moments can have the same benefit as these quotidian moments because it almost becomes aggregated. It's these little moments that
add to each other and can still have the same impact and so again it's it's about shifting the lens and saying it doesn't only have to be that if that's your choice it can be but what i want to encourage people to do is really instead to have a mindset in which we can find it anywhere
It is absolutely true. It's true for a couple of different reasons. First, one of the key components of wonder being curiosity. We are naturally less curious as we age. This is simply, again, because we think that we've discovered everything there is to discover. But of course, that's erroneous. There's so many things we can discover. But curiosity is a bit like a muscle.
The more that we practice it, the more then that we will be able to experience curiosity. So if we can hone that sort of curiosity muscle, then we will find more things to feel a sense of wonder about. But we are dealing with a more calcified brain. We're dealing with neural pathways that are very set.
And we're dealing with more schema, building blocks that have decided, well, I know everything there is to know about the world. But I think in that there's a little bit of hubris as well, you know, a little bit of ego to say, well, I've seen it all. But of course, if we, again, approach things with the eyes of a child, we can find those elements to feel a sense of wonder about.
But there's no question that it is harder than it is for children. And that's one of the reasons why I believe we feel such a sense of wonder watching children experience those things for the first time. It's why we get so much joy watching babies and children, you know, have those experiences. Yeah.
And that's that sense of mixed emotion. Another one of those is nostalgia is a mixed emotion where we can reflect back and consider both the positive and negative. And it's really positive that it's beneficial for us.
There was a piece of research done where widows and widowers, if they reflected on their deceased loved one and remembered both the positive and negative elements of their relationship, they were more resilient. They were better able to manage their grief. And so what we know is if we choose to receive both the
positive and negative, as opposed to sort of a toxic positivity pushing always towards being happy, then that gives us a greater what's known as chemo diversity. It means that we have a better portfolio of emotions to access, and that's really helpful for us.
And so what you're talking about is sort of this mixed emotion where there's a little bit of a poignancy of remembrance of happiness, but also of struggle and sadness. And having those two at the same time is really, really helpful It also shows that it makes us more tolerant people because we're able to see nuance in the world as opposed to everything being black and white, happy or sad.
What the research says is that it doesn't actually take that much. There's some experiments that have been done where people looked up just at a grove of trees for two or three minutes and they were able to have benefits. Or people watched drone footage of something that was awe-inspiring and they were able to have benefits that lasted for several days. A 20 minute wonder walk
gives people benefits for up to a week after. And so it really can have a significant benefit. And what makes a wonder walk a wonder walk? Again, you decide it is. You simply choose to not ruminate on what's going on outside of that walk. And you prime yourself to say, I will find something on this walk that will give me a sense of wonder. I will look for things that give me a sense of wonder.
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