Why Your Brain Turns The Miraculous Into The Mundane—And How To Fix It | Maria Popova
Guest Maria Popova, creator of The Marginalian, discusses cultivating awe and wonder as a responsibility and a portal to meaning, especially for combating depression. She shares strategies for meeting reality on its own terms, outgrowing old habits, and approaching meditation non-transactionally, emphasizing intellectual humility and choosing joy despite despair.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Introduction to Wonder and Awe
Maria Popova's Personal Journey with Wonder
Understanding Reality and the 'Tyranny of Should'
The Connection Between Meaning and Wonder
Wonder as a Calibrator for Love and Relationships
The Concept of Each Person as a 'Cosmos'
Meditation: Purpose vs. Tool
The Value of Intellectual Humility and Questioning Certainty
Reading as a Practice for Empathy and Open-Mindedness
Coping with Anxiety and Life's Uncertainties
Outgrowing Habits and the Challenge of Knowing What You Want
'Choosing Joy' Amidst Despair
Historical Perspective on Difficult Times
The Enduring Value of Love and Non-Attachment to Outcomes
The Coherence of Poetry and Science
The Marginalian: An Ongoing Search for Meaning
6 Key Concepts
Wonder & Awe
A state of being that effectively counteracts depression and self-involvement by providing a feeling of something larger than oneself, fostering outwardness and open presence without judgment. It is identified as the undercurrent beneath Maria Popova's work and a primary means of finding reasons for being.
Tyranny of Should
The mental habit of resisting reality by focusing on how things 'should' be different, which ultimately negates the present moment and prevents finding gladness in reality as it is. It is described as the ultimate negation of reality, hindering a 'wonder-smitten' approach to life.
Unselfing
The process of moving beyond a self-involved state, often facilitated by wonder, which shifts focus away from personal suffering and towards something larger than oneself. Depression, for example, is described as an incredibly self-involved state that wonder helps to alleviate.
Intellectual Humility
The practice of acknowledging one's own limitations in knowledge and understanding, fostering perpetual curiosity and open-mindedness rather than clinging to certainties or opinions, which can be oppressive and limiting. It is presented as a portal to wonder, countering the human impulse towards certainty.
Choosing Joy
A conscious decision to focus on and elevate inner experiences of joy, not as a denial of friction or frustration, but as an integration of despair and suffering, providing the capacity to bear life's difficulties. It is described as a function of focus and inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice, ultimately what saves us.
Middle Path (in advice)
An approach to sharing insights or practices that avoids dispensing certainties or being overly prescriptive, instead encouraging individuals to 'come see for yourself' and test what works for them. This concept, rooted in Buddhist philosophy, is likened to scientific empiricism.
10 Questions Answered
Cultivating wonder is crucial for alleviating suffering, as it counteracts self-involved states like depression, reduces judgment, and provides a sense of connection to something larger than oneself.
One can become wonder-smitten by meeting reality on its own terms, using science to understand elemental truths, and actively seeking things in the world as it is to be glad about, rather than resisting it with 'shoulds'.
Wonder serves as a portal to meaning by training attention and consecrating our capacity to focus, allowing us to find focal points of meaning in an ultimately meaningless existence and making our mortality bearable.
Wonder can improve relationships by fostering an unconditional, open presence with another person, allowing one to see them as a 'wonder' rather than as a means to fulfill personal needs or desires, thus clarifying what true love is.
While meditation offers practical benefits like reduced suffering, viewing it purely as a tool with a specific purpose risks robbing one of the pure gift of being; instead, it can be approached as an expansion of being without a teleological mindset.
One can combat the impulse towards certainty by reminding oneself that 'it's not about me' (considering myriad external factors affecting others), recognizing certainty as a soothing but limiting coping mechanism for life's inherent uncertainty, and practicing discomfort tolerance.
Reading, especially fiction, fosters intellectual humility by exposing one to diverse minds and perspectives, acting as a check against one's own compulsion towards certainty, and providing empathy by allowing one to inhabit other points of view.
Choosing joy involves an integration of despair and suffering, acknowledging legitimate reasons for sorrow, but making a conscious choice to focus attention on aspects of life that bring joy, gratitude, and wonder, using it as a perspective rather than denial.
The hardest thing in life is not getting what you want, but knowing what you want, as people often invent ways to bypass this difficulty through over-planning or adhering to 'shoulds' rather than truly listening to their inner desires.
Maria Popova approaches The Marginalian as her personal 'marginalia on the search for meaning,' an ongoing log of her own becoming as a person, expressed through her engagement with the writings of others that have resonated with her and taught her about life.
28 Actionable Insights
1. Cultivate Awe & Wonder
Actively resist the deadening effect of habit and routine by cultivating awe and wonder in your life. This practice can lead to improved mood, reduced stress and anxiety, increased creativity, open-mindedness, immune function, and cardiovascular health.
2. Reduce Judgment for Wonder
Minimize judgment of reality, yourself, situations, and other people, as wonder cannot coexist with judgment. A significant portion of suffering stems from judgment and resistance to reality.
3. Practice Outwardness Through Wonder
Engage in a constant practice of outwardness by focusing on things larger than yourself, which is the essence of wonder. This helps combat self-involved states like depression and shifts mental focus externally.
4. Meet Reality on Its Terms
Strive to meet reality on its own terms, without suffering over how you wish things were different or succumbing to ’the tyranny of should.’ This approach, exemplified by science, leaves no room for opinion or resistance to elemental truths.
5. Train Attention for Meaning
Consecrate and train your capacity to pay attention, as wonder is essentially a training of attention. This focused attention serves as a portal to experiencing meaning in life.
6. Balance Wonder & Judgment in Relationships
Calibrate your relationships by ensuring a healthy ratio between wonder and judgment, favoring wonder. An imbalance, particularly too much judgment, can lead to self-delusions and prevent the experience of real love.
7. See Others as Wonders
Cultivate the purest form of love by seeing another person as a wonder in themselves, rather than as a means to meet your needs or fulfill desires. This clarifies the relationship and honors the individual.
8. Practice Tenderness When Wonder Fails
When wonder is difficult, such as during annoyances in relationships, practice tenderness towards your own feelings and the situation. This prevents using temporary frustrations as evidence that a relationship is fundamentally flawed.
9. Engage in Daily Meditation
Maintain a daily meditation practice to begin the day with openness and awareness, without viewing it as a self-improvement tool. This practice fosters an expansion of being and a deepening of the inner self.
10. Contemplate in Nature & Motion
Spend time outdoors, particularly walking, to clear your head, anneal thoughts, and create contemplative space. Motion can help discharge kinetic energy, allowing for better focus and deeper thinking.
11. Decouple Meditation Benefits from Purpose
Decouple the legitimate practical benefits of meditation from the idea that those benefits are its sole purpose. Approaching meditation with a fixed purpose can detract from the pure gift of being and its inherent expansion.
12. Work with Agendas in Meditation
Acknowledge and work with your inherent agendas and desires in meditation, rather than trying to eliminate them immediately. This gradual approach, like giving the mind ’enough data,’ can lead to non-transactionality and letting go.
13. Remind Yourself: Not About Me
Regularly remind yourself that other people’s behaviors, choices, and attitudes are often not about you. This practice helps to check the human impulse towards certainty and reduces self-referential thinking, which can cause problems.
14. Tolerate Discomfort for Humility
Practice tolerating discomfort, as learned in meditation, to counter the illusion of certainty. Life is profoundly uncertain, and this practice helps manage the discomfort of not knowing outcomes.
15. Read Widely for Empathy
Read widely, especially fiction, to cultivate empathy and challenge your own certainties. This exposes you to infinitely many kinds of lives, offering perspective and showing that your pain is not unique.
16. Practice Non-Attachment to Results
Make plans but practice non-attachment to the outcomes, remaining willing to change course. This aligns with the ‘middle path’ and helps manage the fear-driven need for certainty about the future.
17. Cultivate Spontaneity, Reduce Planning
Cultivate spontaneity and reduce over-planning in your daily life to discover what you genuinely want. Over-planning can preempt genuine desires by imposing ‘shoulds,’ making it difficult to know your true wants.
18. Use Meditation to Hear Wants
Utilize meditation to quiet the ’tyranny of shoulds’ and more effectively hear what your body and mind truly want. This practice aids in the difficult task of discerning genuine desires from external expectations.
19. Do Fewer Things, Excellently
Focus on doing fewer things but making them excellent, rather than attempting many tasks quickly. This approach, as advised by Joseph Goldstein, encourages deeper engagement and higher quality in your endeavors.
20. Expect Worthwhile Endeavors Take Time
Manage your expectations by understanding that anything truly worthwhile is likely to take a long time. This perspective encourages patience and sustained effort over quick results.
21. Be Vigilant Against Compulsion
Develop vigilance towards anything that feels like a compulsion, using it as a litmus test for potentially unhealthy behaviors. Even seemingly productive actions can be driven by an unhealthy internal compulsion.
22. Actively Choose & Magnify Joy
Actively choose and magnify joy, wonder, and curiosity in your life, consciously doing less of everything else. This preempts the ’tyranny of shoulds’ and fosters a more fulfilling and authentic existence.
23. Broaden Your Portals to Joy
Identify and consciously broaden your personal ‘portals to joy,’ revisiting them frequently. This practice helps sustain joy and makes life’s challenges more bearable.
24. Use Meditation for Inner Menu
Utilize meditation to recognize the ‘inner menu’ of thoughts and feelings, consciously choosing to focus on joy and gratitude despite other mental content. This provides agency and freedom in managing the mind’s constant activity.
25. Cultivate Optimism of Willingness
Cultivate optimism not about specific future outcomes, but about your willingness to show up and give your best, regardless of what happens. This offers an empowering and realistic stance in the face of uncertainty.
26. Remain Open to Unimagined Possibilities
Remain open to possibilities that extend beyond the limits of your current imagination for how situations or projects can turn out. This allows for unexpected gifts and creative fertility, even when desired outcomes don’t materialize.
27. Challenge Dismissal of Unknown
Be aware of and challenge the human tendency to dismiss anything you don’t understand or are not literate in. This impulse limits your world and prevents new discoveries and perspectives.
28. Explore Intersections for Wonder
Explore the intersection of different fields, such as poetry and science, to find new perspectives and foster wonder. This approach can provide coherence between the search for truth and the longing for meaning, as wonder is the meeting point of reality with feeling.
13 Key Quotes
Wonder and judgment can coexist. There is no wonder when there is a judgment.
Maria Popova
To live wonder-smitten with reality is the gladdest way to live.
Maria Popova
We are matter looking for meaning, which is hard because we are matter, which means an admission of our mortality.
Maria Popova
You think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
James Baldwin
Nothing, not one thing hurts us more or causes us to hurt others more than our certainties.
Maria Popova
The entire drama of life on earth is: SKAZ-headed person number one steps outside where he encounters SKAZ-headed person number two, both seeing themselves as the center of the universe, thinking highly of themselves, immediately slightly misunderstand everything in a world full of people who seem to know everything passionately based on little often slanted information where certainty is often mistaken for power. What a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure, that is, perpetually curious.
George Saunders
We don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.
Kurt Vonnegut
The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity. And it's really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad.
Alan Watts
Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time.
Debbie Millman
Joy is not a function of a life free of friction and frustration, but a function of focus and inner elevation by the fulcrum of choice.
Maria Popova
All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn't that the evil thing wins, it never will, but that it doesn't die.
John Steinbeck
It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it. No time can be easy if one is living through it.
James Baldwin
Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturned love. But now I think there is no unreturned love. The pay is certain one way or another. I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not returned. Yet out of that, I've written these songs.
Walt Whitman