A couple years ago, I read this fabulous idea by Wayne Dyer that we should approach our lives with the wonder and excitement of a child. Childlike wonder at the world around us and our experiences in it. What a concept. As I’m still in the process of raising children, I know exactly what this means. My guys are getting older now, but still asking constant questions about the ways of the world and processing the answers with so much curiosity and emotion. So, I’ve been trying to live the same way.
But instead of focusing on trying to figure the ways of the world around me, I focus on being interested in my own experience in that world. This causes me to be more present in my daily routines, as I am observing the way my body and my mind move me throughout the day. It’s actually fascinating. I say the words “childlike wonder” in my head as I leave the house to go to the grocery, not knowing what experience awaits me there. I let myself get curious about checking the mail and answering a phone call. I constantly tell anyone who will listen that “anything can happen.” And I expect that it will.
There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
– Albert Einstein
After some time practicing this approach, I’ve discovered that there are a few things about it that are actually quite compelling. Allow me to share:
- It’s a more pleasant way to exist. I can either be interested and amazed at the sequence of events that I both witness and experience every day in life, or I can be uninterested and bored, or even worse, disgusted. Will taking the latter approach produce better results? Perhaps it would save me from some heartache when my overly optimistic outlook fails to deliver. But I can’t imagine that it would bring me more joy or success. And children tend to bounce back from disappointment amazingly quickly.
- It broadens your desires, in a good way. If I allow myself to expect that great, amazing things will happen in my life, then I’m more inclined to allow myself to entertain thoughts of my own grandeur. These thoughts would normally be subdued by disbelief that they could ever come true. But now—I fantasize about being a business owner, writing a novel, and making boatloads of money in the stock market. And then helping my family and then strangers. Those thoughts feel good. I start to believe they could be possible. And what comes after believing in that possibility is action. Suddenly I am starting a side hustle, writing 20 minutes a day, and cashing in on my first successful stock. I begin creating the unexpected in my own life.
- This approach produces results. Outside of what’s said above, I have noticed that the world and people in it have a tendency to rise to your expectations, sometimes even when you think you don’t make them known externally. A year and a half after I got divorced, I scraped up every penny I could find, emptied my savings, and bought a suburban house for me and my boys to try to give them “normal.” It needed work, it needed furniture, and I had no idea how I would provide with an empty bank account and a new mortgage to pay. I kept saying to a friend, “I need to find out I have inherited a lump sum money from someone!” Like who, she asked. I had no idea. No one in my family had much money to speak of. But six months later I got the call that my GODfather, of all people, had passed away and left me $40k.
