Let’s Go on a “Delight Safari”

(4 minute read)

It’s that time of year when life in New York can feel pretty “meh.” We’re Vitamin D deprived. We go to work in the dark; we come home in the dark. When we peek out the window the color scheme is 90’s brown mixed with 2010’s gray. Our serotonin even put on its sweatpants and is snoozing on its little neurotransmitter couch.

It’s super easy to focus on all the things we hate about this time of year. The cold. The grey. The lack of sunlight. The lack of daylight. The sedentariness of it all.

On top of the usual lull this time of year brings, we are also facing incredibly heartbreaking and disturbing images and stories about our government taking violent and deadly actions towards us, the people.  

It’s really not hard to let “meh” be the starring emotion of the show.

While it’s important to very much acknowledge our experiences and our feelings about our experiences, I wonder how dwelling or ruminating about the “greige” of it all is serving us? I wonder how our hyper-focus on “meh” (or more specifically on apathy, sadness, frustration, ennui, distraction, loneliness, rage, helplessness) prevents us from expanding our attention’s purview and noticing the other experiences or feelings running alongside “meh”?

What we put our attention to, grows

Activist and author, adrienne maree brown, reminds us that what “we give attention to grows. what we pay attention to grows.” 

I think she’s saying our attention is powerful. What we put our minds to can burden us or balance us. What we put our minds to shapes the narratives and scripts of our lives. Kind of like that wonderful Brené Brown sentiment of “What is the story you’re telling yourself?”

I’m not saying, “Just switch your attention to the positive! That’s all you gotta do!”

I am saying, “Yes, these things/interactions/experiences are hard, hurtful, devastating, lonely, terrifying, and frustrating. AND these other parts over here are joyful, beautiful, heartwarming, hopeful, empowering, and lovely.” 

It’s expanding our focus. It’s widening the aperture. It’s letting in more light. 

Why is it important to expand our focus?

I find widening our attention can help us not ruminate in our emotions longer than we want to be. When our focus’s spotlight is solely on the situations or people who are disappointing us or are making us feel low, then the feelings of disappointment and low tend to take up more of our mental real estate. We can feel disappointed and learn from the disappointment showing up (usually disappointment is a signal that we really care about something), but how long do we want to feel disappointed for? 

I also think expanding our focus can remind us the temporality of emotions and support us in feeling them vs becoming them. Like when do we go from “I feel disappointed” to “I am disappointed”? When does the feeling go from a state to a trait? When we widen our lens this can help us see the emotions as another emotion that will come and go and come and go, like clouds rolling by, vs a more permanent way of being.

Lastly, I think taking some altitude and widening our purview can provide us a greater sense of balance, thus helping us tolerate more uncomfortable emotions. When we see that running alongside the fear is a sliver of excitement, we tend to face the fear a bit more. When we see that running alongside the violent arrests by government officials are people protesting, we can see that not all hope is lost; we are not helpless. 

How can we practice widening our scope?

There are several ways we can do this but for now, here are my favorite two ways to expand our view. 

One of my favorite ways is to use the powerful conjunction, AND. “It’s freezing outside AND the snowflakes are whimsical.” “The government is scary AND the people are courageous.” 

Another one of my favorite ways to widen our attention is to get playful and make a game out of it. More specifically, I like to go on what I call “Delight Safaris.” Delight Safaris are like scavenger hunts but instead of searching for clues and treasure, you’re searching for moments of delight that exist in your everyday life. I personally like to try and notice 5 moments of delight in one day when I decide to go on a Delight Safari. 

For example, moments of delight can be when we notice the sunlight twinkling across the snow, how soft our dog’s fur is, when we hear kids giggle, when we hold a warm cup of tea in our hands, when we taste coffee first thing in the morning, when we listen to our cat’s purrrrr, when we gab over dinner with our friends, when we hug someone we haven’t seen in a while, when we start laughing because our friend is laughing so hard. (Notice how much delight is linked to engaging our 5 senses?….interesting!)

Bonus points if you jot the 5 moments of delight down in your phone or on real paper. 

These are just some ways we can experiment with expanding our attention. Want to learn more ways or want support with widening your scope? Reach out to me on my Connect page. 

With care,
Chrissy