Why wonderment is key for a happier day

It’s World Happiness Day! And the first day of spring! What could be more joyful? In honour of the happiest day of the year, joyologist Donna Easton shares how she brightens up every day of the year…

My clients often ask me, 'How can I be happier?' and it's a difficult one to answer, as most of the people I work with don’t feel miserable or sad. Instead they feel as if someone’s turned the vibrancy down on their lives.

There are many simple tools to exercise our happy muscles but when I get asked for just one thing that makes a difference to our happiness, there is something that comes to mind for its ability to shift my mood, snap me out of my reverie and gives me a dose of the fuzzies inside – accessing wonderment.

Think of wonderment as the jazzier sibling of mindfulness. The latter helps with stress reduction, improving both physical and mental health and feeding into our overall sense of happiness, but what if we drill down a little further to give us a cherry on top of our mindfulness?

We often see happiness as something to strive for or as something we once had, and instead of focussing on the brilliant parts of our lives now, we look to the future, thinking we'll be happy when we achieve certain goals – but now is the only thing we truly have.

There's no denying that mindfulness does a cracking job but when I need a little something extra to boost me out of a slump, I look for the wonderment in the moment.

I love to dig down a little, to not only access the current moment but to find the utter magic in it, the amazingness of the right now, the true majesty of existence and the wonderment of this life we have. 

READ: How to bounce back from an unlucky day 

How to access wonderment

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• Take a deep breath right now. Become aware of where you are.

• Feel your clothes touching your body and the weight of your body on the chair.

• Stop. Be silent. Look around you. Access all of your senses.

• You may be somewhere you’ve been a thousand times but really look and give it some thought.

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• Encourage your mind to be curious and dive deeper under what you can see.

• With wonderment, marvel at the space you are in. Really give it some thought and think about the beauty in what you can see.

• See where your surroundings have been touched by human hands and innovation or created by nature. Maybe it’s the remarkable feat of engineering that has made your train move along the track. The building you are sitting in, once a drawing on a piece of paper. 

• The beauty of outdoors where birds and creatures are busying themselves about their day and the Spring daffodils and trees are calmly stretching towards the sky.

• The music you can hear, created by a whole host of talent and now somehow making its way to your ears, filling your soul and giving you a sound that brings you joy.

• Your partner pottering about upstairs. Your children messing around and giggling and squealing, people chatting, cars driving by, wind rushing, washing machines humming and the remembrance that it is all part of your world, all connected, all extraordinary and all totally and utterly real.

Smile and feel part of the world, feel a fizzy feeling rise in your tummy. Know that you won’t outsource your happiness or fling it to the end of a five-year-plan. Claim it right now and access the wonderment in the every day. I promise it’s all around you.   

Find out how to work with DonnaHELLO!'s Happiness Hub for inspiration on living a happier life.