This post is part of a series about our wellbeing framework, The Wellbeing Triangle. Before you delve in to connecting with others, I’d encourage you to go back and read the previous posts, An Introduction to the Wellbeing Triangle, Connection with Self and Connection with Others.
You know those three little stars that sit in a row that you sometimes see at night? You might know them as Orion’s belt. They sit one thousand, three hundred and sixty light years away from planet Earth. With current space technology, it takes a space craft 18,000 years to travel each light year. That means that if you set off to Orion’s belt today, you wouldn’t arrive for another 13 million years!
That stuff blows my mind. It makes me realise that my ‘own little world’ isn’t quite as big as I think it is. It draws my attention to the sheer enormity and complexity of the universe we’re a part of. I might even say that it gives me ‘an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful’. That’s how the dictionary defines ‘awe’.
Awe is apparently good. So good that it can actually boost our immune system so one set of American scientists have recently found. Other studies have shown that engaging in awe releases endorphins; the hormones that make us feel good.
Something else that has been proven to release endorphins is gratitude. Gratitude is both an act and an attitude, one that can be developed over time. Positive Psychology guru Shawn Achor did a study where he asked participants to record three good things at the end of each day and then journal about one of those things in more detail. He found that after just 21 days participants were more inclined to notice the positive things in their lives. He concluded that these people had literally rewired their brains to be, and feel more positive.
Both awe and gratitude are part of what connects us with ‘Other’. ‘Other’ is a strange term, but it’s meant to indicate that which is more than our own human experience. Some people of faith would call this ‘thing’ God. Others might use terms like ‘the divine’ or simply ‘the universe’. The simple thing for us here is that for our wellbeing it’s important for us to look beyond ourselves and even beyond our fellow humans. Spending time connecting with that which is more than us, with a sense of gratitude is what we’re trying to encourage here.
The final part of our Wellbeing Triangle invites us to feed our soul through this connection with ‘Other’ and so we invite you today to do this by using one of these simple activities:
If you have 5 minutes, write down three things that have been good about your day so far. Spend a moment thinking about one of those things in a bit more detail. Relive the experience by thinking about what you saw, heard, smelt, tasted and felt in that moment.
If you have 15 minutes, take a leaf or other natural object and draw it in detail. Don’t worry about the quality, just use the time to notice more carefully some of the intricacies it has. Approach it with ‘childlike eyes’, as if seeing and noticing it for the first time.
If you have a bit longer, put together a photo collage (use the pic collage app to do this electronically if you like) of things that give you a sense of awe; things that are bigger and greater than you. Maybe it’s a landscape, something from space or a tall building. As you do it, allow it to put your own life and experience in perspective.