Do you ever find yourself in front of a challenge, or unwanted conversation, or conflict and you just want to run? Your mind feels scattered, you can’t come up with solutions and your body is ready for fight or flight or freeze! I know those situations feel horrible and most often you want to avoid them. But avoidance doesn’t ever help… it just puts your reality in a place that will catch up with you.
Instead, I suggest you take on a mindset of wonder, curiosity and openness. These are all gateways to transformation, solutions and your desires to be met.
Let’s look at each word more closely. As a noun, wonder refers to the emotion excited by what is strange and exciting. As a verb wonder refers to thinking or speculating with curiosity. Curiosity refers to the desire to learn or know about anything. I look at curiosity like inquisitiveness. There is an opportunity to make a deeper inquiry into what is really going on. And openness refers to setting a space or passage for something to pass through.
Meet challenge with wonder, curiosity and openness and you have a formula for a new possibility, to learn from and bring a deeper inquiry to the situation that has more likelihood of a solution. It reminds me of the famous Einstein quote where he said, “You can’t solve a problem with the same level of thinking in which the problem was created.” So true! Wonder, curiosity and openness allow you to take an internal “step back” and see things from a different angle.
And can’t you just feel your body relax when you choose to be open, curious and in wonder? I feel my shoulders go down, I feel my mind relax and I feel present with trusting there is a way through. Wouldn’t that feel better than to run?! When you run, you also run away from your desires.
Remember, your mind does what you want it to do and believes what you believe. When you are tense and want to run, you shut off access to certain areas or your brain. There is not the same opportunity for real answers to come. I also like the inherent belief in wonder, curiosity and openness that all is well and will be well if I get myself relaxed and grounded. I’ll have more balanced emotions and access to my whole brain. A much better solution will follow!
So, the next time you find yourself lacing your Nikes when confronted by something or someone, try stepping into wonder.
“I wonder what’s really going on here?”
“I wonder what it would be like to step back and take another look?”
“I’m curious how the other person is feeling in this moment.”
“I’m open to seeing this in a different way.”
I was at a meeting to help a department within an organization resolve an issue. I noticed not everyone at the table was participating in the conversation except two rather angry people. I interrupted the discourse and asked if we could step back and get really curious about what was going on. In the end, what was believed to be a Conflict Resolution issue ended up being about Radical Empathy. Once we got clear, everyone at the table relaxed and ideas started to flow for the department!
I invite you to use wonder, curiosity and openness the next time you feel challenged by something or someone.
Hope this lands in your Being Human toolkit 😉
To feeling well!
Mindfully,
If this resonates with you and you’d like to overcome some of your own barriers to living the life you want, then click here and I’ll make sure we connect. And you know I like to share the love, so if you know someone who could benefit from this article then please share it! Imagine, thought by thought and act by act we are creating a more conscious world.
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