RECLAIM YOUR WONDER: 👀 Why You Can't Just Be Here Now
When's the last time something genuinely stopped you in your tracks, friend? We all KNOW summer goes too fast. We know the sunset is gorgeous. We know we should be more present + enjoy the life we worked so hard to build. And yet we keep rushing right past the very things we say matter most. Why? That's the question this episode wrestles with — bc it turns out we don't lose our wonder because life stops being beautiful. We lose it because wonder requires surrender, and surrender feels scary when your whole identity is wrapped up in doing + building + carrying + proving. This week we're getting honest about how much we've been carrying — and whether it was ever ours to carry in the first place. Grab the RECLAIM YOUR SUMMER Workbook + Companion Guide + do this work right alongside me all season. You are NOT too late to join. 🌿
In this post we'll chat thru…
✻ Why we rush past the lives we prayed for
✻ The awe + wonder study where people drew themselves smaller
✻ Becoming small in ego without becoming small in worth
✻ Why distraction feels easier than wonder
✻ What if the goal was never to carry more
LET'S DIVE IN. 🖤
Hey hey friend. Welcome back to The Self Care Sisterhood + welcome back to our RECLAIM YOUR SUMMER series. I'm so glad you're here.
So. When I first sat down to outline this episode, I thought it was gonna be about wonder.
You know the one. Slow down enough to notice the sunset. Look up from your phone. Soak up summer before it slips through your fingers. We ARE gonna talk about all of that. But I'll be honest with you — the longer I sat with this one over the last few weeks, the more I realized this episode isn't actually about wonder. At least not the way I thought it was.
Bc here's the question that kept tugging at me: why is it so HARD for us to experience wonder in the first place?
Think about it. None of us need to be convinced that life is full of beautiful things. We KNOW summer goes too fast. We know the sunset is gorgeous. We know we should be more present. We know we should enjoy the life we worked so hard to build. We know all of it. Yet we still find ourselves rushing right past the very things we say matter most. Why?
That's the question. That's the whole episode. So let's actually get into it.
WHERE THE WONDER WENT
Okay so let me take you to a moment from a few days ago.
I'm sitting outside on my patio. Iced Americano in my hand. My dogs are all curled up next to me. I've got a book in my lap. It's one of those slow, golden Saturday mornings I am ALWAYS saying I want more of. Laundry humming away inside. House picked up. Groceries already ordered. Everything calm.
At that exact same moment — the coffee shop we built here in Tampa, FL is absolutely slammed, in the best way. The podcast is creeping up on ten THOUSAND downloads. There's so much good happening right now that a younger version of me would have just about fallen over with gratitude. And you guys. There I am, in the middle of all of it and my brain is busy telling me I'm not doing enough.
I should be posting more. Creating more. Building more. Growing more. I should have a bigger plan. A new project. A clearer vision. SOMETHING.
And it just hit me, right there on the patio. I was sitting inside a life I literally used to PRAY for and somehow I was struggling to enjoy it.
Maybe you know that feeling. Maybe yours isn't a coffee shop or a podcast. Maybe it's your family. Your marriage. Your health. Your career. Your home. Some season you worked so incredibly hard to finally reach. You get there. You actually arrive. And almost immediately, you're scanning the horizon again looking for what's next. What's unfinished. What's missing. What's still not enough. You're physically living in one life while your mind has already run off to the next one.
And so, yeah, while I wanted this episode to be about the magic of awe and wonder, I think this whole conversation has to start with WHY we struggle to see it all in the first place.
THE AWE + WONDER STUDY
So a few years ago I read this book called The Unplugged Hours by Hannah Brencher. Loved it so much I actually ended up having Hannah on the podcast — I'll link that episode for you, it's a good one.
But there was this one story in the book that just would NOT leave me. Long after I finished it, I was still chewing on it. Even to this day.
She shared a study on awe + wonder where researchers had people experience something genuinely awe-inspiring, and then afterward they asked them to draw themselves. Just draw a picture of yourself on the page. Here's what they found:
The people who'd just felt that awe? They drew themselves noticeably SMALLER than the people who hadn't.
I could not stop thinking about that. Bc at first, "smaller" sounds kind of bad, right? Smaller sounds like less important. Less significant. Less valuable. Less worthy.
But that's not what was happening at all. These people didn't feel insignificant. They felt CONNECTED. For just a moment, they stopped being the center of their own attention. Their worries weren't the biggest thing in the room anymore. Their problems weren't the biggest thing in the room. They'd become aware of something so much larger than themselves.
That idea lodged itself in my heart. I kept coming back to it, over + over bc of what was happening in my own life right around that time.
So around that same season, I was going through ketamine therapy. If you've been with the show a while, you've heard me touch on parts of that journey before. It was a season of really deep healing for me. But it was also honestly one of the strangest experiences I've ever walked through.
During several of my sessions, I kept having this recurring image. Of myself falling between buildings down, down down, and all around me, myself included, everything was crumbling into dust. I would get to the bottom of the fall and it was pure nothingness.
I know. I KNOW how that sounds. Trust me, it felt every bit as dramatic as it sounds. At first, it terrified me. It felt like death. Like disappearing. Like I was losing myself. And if you've ever been through a season where your whole identity started shifting underneath you, maybe you know that specific kind of fear.
Bc here's the thing — I had spent YEARS building. Building businesses. Building goals. Building routines. Building this whole identity around being productive + capable + ambitious. I was the woman who got things done. Who carried things. Who could be counted on, always.
So the idea of becoming smaller? That felt like a genuine threat. If I become smaller, what happens to me? If I loosen my grip, what happens to everything I'm holding up? If I stop striving — do I lose my momentum? My relevance? Do I lose ME? At the time, I didn't have a single answer to any of that. I just knew that image scared me to my core.
But as I came out of those sessions + spent real time sitting with what I was learning, slowly... I started to see it differently.
Maybe I wasn't disappearing at all. Maybe I was making room.
Maybe I had spent SO many years carrying things that I'd completely forgotten what it even felt like to just be part of something bigger than myself.
Bc everything in my life had gotten so big. My goals were big. My plans were big. My worries were big. My expectations were big. Even my desire to constantly improve myself had gotten BIG. Everything — everything — revolved around becoming more. Doing more. Producing more. Achieving more.
What if the invitation was never to become bigger? What if the invitation was to let everything ELSE become bigger? To let the world become bigger. To let God become bigger. To let wonder become bigger.
And the more I sat with that study and my own experience, the more it cracked something open in me which became the true heart for this being a part of the RECLAIM YOUR SUMMER workbook:
Wonder requires us to become smaller. Not smaller in worth. Not smaller in value. Not smaller in importance. Smaller in EGO. Smaller in control. Smaller in self-focus. And if I'm being really honest with you — I think that right there is why so many of us quietly struggle with it and avoid wonder all together in our adult lives.
WHY WE AVOID WONDER
I don't think we lose our wonder because life stops being beautiful. I think we lose our wonder because wonder requires surrender. + surrender feels scary.
Especially if you've spent years building a life. Especially if you're someone other people depend on. Especially if your identity has gotten all tangled up with being productive + helpful + responsible + capable + successful + strong.
Wonder asks us to loosen our grip. To stop managing, just for a minute. To put down the measuring stick. To trust. Honestly? I think that's why distraction is so often the easier choice. Bc distraction keeps us moving and wonder asks us to stop. Distraction keeps us fixated on what's next and wonder pulls us back to what's now. Distraction lets us keep proving ourselves and wonder quietly asks whether we ever needed to be proving ourselves in the first place.
Friends. What if the reason we can't quite access wonder isn't that our lives lack beauty? What if it's that we're a little afraid of what happens when we finally stop striving long enough to actually notice it?
WHAT IF THE GOAL WAS NEVER TO CARRY MORE?
So here's the question I've really been marinating on all summer. + I want to hand it to you too.
What if the goal was never to carry more?
So many of us are out here carrying things we were NEVER meant to carry. Expectations. Timelines. Comparisons. Pressure. The belief that our worth is tied to our output. The belief that our value comes from what we produce. The belief that if we stop moving — even for a second — everything's just gonna fall apart.
Then we wonder why we're so exhausted. Why we feel so disconnected from our own lives. Why joy feels like something we have to dig for.
Friend — it is really hard to notice the stars when you're mentally writing tomorrow's to-do list. It's hard to actually see the people sitting right across from you when your face is staring at your phone. It's hard to feel awe when your brain is in constant manage-fix-produce-plan mode.
Wonder is hard bc wonder requires presence. + presence requires trust. Trust that your value doesn't vanish the second you stop striving. Trust that you don't have to re-earn your spot here every single day. Trust that you can loosen your grip + not lose yourself in the process. That’s why WONDER needed a seat at the table this summer with us. Wonder helps us get honest about how much of a load we’re carrying and if it was ever meant to be ours to carry in the first place.
That's the real invitation this week.
Not to become less ambitious. Not to stop growing. Not to stop caring. But to stop CARRYING everything.
To watch the storm roll in. To float in the water. To sit outside in that long, golden evening light. To eat the peach. To read the book. To watch the sunset. To look up at the stars. To notice the life that is already happening all around you, right now.
Not because those things are small. But because they remind us of what's actually true. That we are part of something. That the world is so much bigger than our worries. That God is bigger than our plans. That life is bigger than our productivity. That maybe — maybe the goal was never to carry more. Maybe the goal was to notice more.
This is one of the biggest reasons I created the RECLAIM YOUR SUMMER workbook in the first place. Bc awareness is powerful. But simply listening to today’s episode and “knowing” you need more wonder on its own doesn't change us. We need practices. We need prompts. We need actual built-in moments that help us slow down enough to notice what's right in front of us.
This week's workbook section is all about wonder. Noticing. Paying attention. Looking up. Not as one more thing to do perfectly — not as one more box to check — but as a real invitation to EXPERIENCE your summer instead of sprinting through it. If you've been following along + you haven't grabbed the workbook yet — friend, you are NOT behind. Summer is not over. There is still so much season left to reclaim. And even if the summer is over…this work is RELEVANT for any season of life you’re walking thru. There’s always wonder to be found. You can grab it anytime at inspirebeautybritt.com/reclaim + jump right in.
Alright friends. If this one resonated with you today, I really hope you'll spend a little time in the WONDER section of the workbook this week. Share this episode with a friend. Tag me as you’re working thru your workbook or listening in to each week’s topic. I love to see how this community is reclaiming themselves all season long.
Don't let summer just happen to you, friend. Participate in it. Be awake for it. Bc before we know it, this season's gonna be over. + my hope for you — + honestly, for me too — is that we don't spend it rushing toward whatever's next. That we actually LIVE it while it's still here.
I love you guys. Thank you for spending part of your day with me and I’ll see you right here, next week, on The Self Care Sisterhood Podcast. 🤍
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