Personal development

How to revive your sense of wonder

Rediscovering the magic in everyday life can be a transformative journey. Let's delve into the art of rekindling your sense of wonder, a powerful tool that can enrich your life, stimulate creativity, and foster a deeper connection with the world around you.

Need to Know

Wonder – the desire to know

Motivates targeted explorations and discoveries
Invokes conjectures about “how” and “why”
Advances our understanding of the rich causal architectures of the world
Helps us to appreciate everything around us more fully
Commonly declines with age, but it doesn’t have to
Some people remain lifelong wonderrs

Fostering wonder in children

We can choose to interact with children in ways that help support and maintain their high early levels of wonder

One approach is to ask them open-ended questions
How did you decide which apples to pick?
You can also ask more ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions of yourself while in the presence of a child
This illustrates your role as a partner in wondering and learning

Links & Books

In his book Wonder: Childhood and the Lifelong Love of Science (2022), I provide a detailed account of the sense of wonder and why it is so important to support the incredible ways it flourishes in young children.

Elinor Wonders Why (2020-) is a PBS show that takes a promising approach to supporting wonder in children. The programme’s website features games, activities and videos for young wonderers.

What to do

Conduct regular introspections

Have you learned anything new in the past month that has changed how you view or understand some aspect of the world?
Think about these updates in your understanding as opportunities that enable you to see the world more clearly.
Embrace the proliferation of wonder
When you wonder, try to approach a question with the expectation that you are just taking the first step in what might turn out to be many possible cycles or branching paths of wondering.