It’s honestly pretty wild how children naturally practice what we spend thousands of money on mindfulness retreats to learn. They have this radical presence that we tend to lose somewhere between middle school and our first office job. Take that classic image of a toddler staring at a snail on a sidewalk. For those five or ten minutes, that snail is the entire universe. They aren't checking their watch, worrying about their "to-do" list, or wondering if the snail is being "productive" enough. They’re just... there.
Why this beats the adult autopilot? Awe is actually a choice. We think we’re bored because we’ve seen it all before, but kids prove that anything is fascinating if you actually look at it. Boredom is just a lack of attention. The magic of doing just one thing. Adults are obsessed with multitasking, (admit to be guilty here🙌) but kids are the masters of the "monotask." Because they’re 100% in on whatever they're doing, their peaks of joy are way higher than ours.👌 No emotional leftovers.If a kid is mad, they yell. If they’re happy, they wiggle. They don't carry the residue of a bad morning into their afternoon. They process the feeling completely, let it go, and move on to the next cool thing they find. Basically, they remind us that the world hasn't lost its shine—we just started wearing sunglasses indoors☺️