The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Power of Wonder: The Extraordinary Emotion That Will Change the Way You Live, Learn, and Lead by Monica C. Parker

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

The Power of Wonder: The Extraordinary Emotion That Will Change the Way You Live, Learn, and Lead by Monica C. Parker An eye-opening journey through the magical, yet surprisingly little-understood, human emotion that is wonder. From the first tickle of curiosity to an unexpected shift in how we perceive the world, there isn’t a person who hasn’t experienced wonder, and yet the why and how of this profoundly beneficial emotion is only just beginning to be scientifically examined. This inspiring book from thought leader Monica Parker explores the power of wonder to transform the way we learn, develop new ideas, drive social change, and ultimately become better humans. The Power of Wonder takes readers on a multidisciplinary journey through psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, literature, and business to share some of the surprising secrets behind the mechanics of wonder and guides readers in bringing more of it into their lives. From art and architecture, to love and sex, to sleep and psychedelics, you will learn about the elements and elicitors of wonder, and how it can transform our bodies and brains. Whether it’s taking a daily “wonder walk” or discovering a new absorbing intellectual pursuit, this book shows us how to become more wonderprone and reconnect with a reverence for the world and all the magic in it.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, The Chris Voss Show. Welcome, my friends, neighbors, relatives, all the people around the world is

the chris voss show welcome to the greatest show on earth for the greatest audience on earth that has ever been assembled or some sort of bs like that i need to pay an opera person or someone to come sing that part in fact we have an opera person on the show where we're talking to her about her experience in her wonderful new book so we're getting to that but i need to pay that one guy what's the guy who does the uh fight ring thing where he goes get ready to rumble i i could have something like get ready for some stupid stuff on the chris voss show that he's gonna say and he's gonna have a really intelligent author on uh which is pretty much the way we do things around here anyway folks as you know you know the drill uh you should have it memorized. Many of you have been actively doing that in February. You double our listenership, which is hard to do,

actually, after 13 years. But refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss, youtube.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss. The big LinkedIn group, the LinkedIn newsletters are killing it over there they're very popular and uh everyone's really been enjoying them and all the stuff that goes into them so it's pretty cool that way and what's going on we have an amazing author on the show monica c parker will be joining us here in a second uh she is the author of the new book uh the power of wonder the extraordinary emotion that will change the way you live learn and lead came out february 21st 2023 but uh at first a little segment we're doing called the news and we're having some fun with it here in

the thing it's not the kind of news that you're you're like oh god not that kind of news uh this is from the ap the associated press so this isn't something we just made up uh coming soon reese's cups chocolate bars are going to be made from plants you'll be able to get reese's peanut butter cups that are plant-based to get the vegan treatment uh hershey's company has announced they'll make the first vegan chocolates to be sold nationally so i have some questions people this really makes me wonder like has this whole time uh reese's cups been made from meat? Like, has there been meat in them?

What's going on? I mean, peanut butter is peanuts. Chocolate is made from plants. How's that not vegan? Like, was E.T. in the movie? Was he like a carnivore? Is that something we didn't know? Like, what do you do?

You say, hey, honey, would you like some of my steak? She's like, no, I'm just going to have some of my Reese's cup with a little A1 barbecue sauce and a nice Chianti with some fava beans. What was in Reese's pieces before? This is like the same time McDonald's came out and said, hey, we're going to put chicken in chicken McNuggets. It's like, what the hell? You're like, what was going on up until now? So there you go. Well, this is important because younger consumers are looking for this, the new Gen Zers. You know, they want these more healthier products. Sadly, you'll still have the same packaging that will fill up landfills and pollute oceans.

But, you know, who am I to judge what people are going to do and what the youth of this country want to do? So there you go. But the one benefit is, is they will get to charge a dollar more for it. So I think we all know what the motivation is here. In other news, this is unbelievable. This also comes from the Associated Press, and it will blow your mind. A German ice cream parlor is offering cricket-flavored scoops. A German ice cream parlor has expanded its menu with a skin crawling offering

cricket flavored scoops with dried brown crickets on top because we all know that's what uh that's what we're missing with ice cream right all of us were sick of that dairy stuff and the sweetness and you know strawberry chocolate and orange uh we decided we really want to go with with crickets i don't know what's going on man like. Like what is going on in the world? First, we're discussing whether we're putting meat in Hershey's or Reese's, Hershey's Reese's cups. Now we're just working on this. In the past, the gentleman who's done this in Germany,

he's offered liver sausage and gorgonzola cheese ice cream, as well as gold ice plated cheese. So I don't know, man. What are you up to next? We got crickets and ice cream, arachnophobia. Isated uh cheese so i don't know man what do you have to next we got crickets and ice cream arachnophobia is that next spiders putting them in there um so there you go it's evident it's legal now to use crickets for everything in fact maybe we'll start using them on the show maybe we'll interview a few of those crickets anyway on to the on to the on to the real news the important news the intelligent news that we're going to be talking about today. Once again, we have Monica C. Parker on the show, and she's going to be talking to us

about an amazing new book, The Power of Wonder. You can order it wherever fine books are sold, because you want to stay away from those alleyway bookstores. I thought she was going to be an interesting guest today, and I'm sure she will be. She has held the positions of opera singer, I'll probably hire her for that part I I talked about in the beginning, uh, museum exhibition designer and homicide investigator defending death row inmates for Flores department. I like to say at the beginning of the show, uh, I had nothing to do with that body they found last week. Uh, it's just a joke.

People, uh, she's a world renowned speaker, writer and authority on the future of work. Monica Parker spent decades helping people discover how to lead and live wonderfully wonderfully being the key word there uh she's the founder of a human a global human analytics and change consultancy hatch whose clients include bluetooth companies and such as linkedin google prudential and lego that's got to be fun lego uh parker challenges corporate systems to advocate for more meaningful work lives. And we've seen that with the new thing with, what is it, the stay-at-home remote working. In addition, her extensive advocacy work, she's been an opera singer, a museum exhibition designer, and homicide investigator. And she's a lover of the arts, literature, and Mexican food.

Hey, that makes the two of us. She spends time with her family between Atlanta, London, and Nice. Did I say that correctly? Nice, France? Yeah. There you go. I'm fairly well-traveled, at least on Google Maps. Monica, how are you? I'm great.

How are you, Chris? There you go. Thank you for being patient through the first-ever segment we've done of News of the Oddities or the Weird. Yeah, I'm fascinated. I want to know what meat products were in the uh in the reeses before yeah like i don't know man i mean i i do remember a time i think i was eating one and a bone was in it no i'm just kidding that's a joke don't don't sue me for whatever we hear hershey's but that would be funny you're just like i i didn't know this had bones like fish the bones come out the bones come out. Anyway, let's get onto your book. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs and get to know you better. Yep. They can find me at monica-parker.com and

also on LinkedIn and Insta and all those other great places at Monica C. Parker. There you go. So what motivated you to write this book? Is it your first book and what motivated you? It is my first book. What motivated me? Well, I've been fascinated my entire professional career. I've been fascinated by how people manage change, big existential change, change like, I don't know, COVID or losing your job or in the case of working with people on death row, losing your life at the hands of the government. And I really set about to write a book about change management. And when I started researching, I kept coming back to this notion that the elements of wonder really help people be more buoyant and be able to withstand change more successfully. And I just went down a rabbit hole, a wonder rabbit hole. And four years later, we have a book. So it was really just a fascination with this topic and a belief that if I was as fascinated, other people would be as well. And I thought that it would

be something that people could talk about and would help us live life more meaningfully. There you go. The power of wonder. So what is wonder specifically or generally? What is the definition? It's kind of a shapeshifter. It's a really a strange word. It can be a verb and a noun, right? So we talk about to wonder, which is sort of the curiosity element of it, but we can also talk about a wonder as a noun, like it was a wonder or wondrous, and it can be descriptive. So what I wanted to do is sort of link those two ideas into one cycle. So I describe it as five interlinking elements. I call it watch,

wander, whittle, wow, and woe. And what those comprise of are is openness. So being openness to experience, which is a personality trait, but also openness to ideas,

to new ideas and openness to new people that we might not interact with all the time. Then wander, which is curiosity. And curiosity is an incredible emotion. It helps us be more empathetic, being curious about other people. And certainly as we age, of course, you are forever young, Chris. But as we age, we find that we tend to be less curious about things. We think there's less to be curious about, but in fact, there's so much that we can still find curiosity in. Then when we talk about

whittle, that's really about being very absorbed. So that might be in the state of flow. That's an expression that a lot of people understand that sort of getting in the flow where you're fully absorbed in the moment and in activity. But it's about pairing back distractions so that you can really be present in the moment. And then the last two elements, wow and whoa, represent awe. And the reason that awe gets two elements is because awe really has two pieces to it, which is the first, the moment you experience something that gives you a sense of awe, it's so vast. It makes you feel like a smaller component part of a bigger system. And we frequently feel that emotion, maybe seeing something incredible

in nature. I mean, you're in Utah, there's incredible awe-inspiring vistas there. Maybe it's seeing your child walk for the first time. And then after we experienced that, we had the woe moment. And that's where our brains actually are changed by the experience. So from that point on, we never see the world quite the same way again. And so this cycle becomes almost additive. So the more that you experience, say, curiosity and absorption and awe, then you're more open and it continues to become additive and becomes easier to tap into wonder the more that you practice it. There you go. You know, it's, it's always been interesting to me. I remember analyzing this when I was young about how there's, you know, the element of wonder as a child, because you're

discovering everything for the first time. And, uh, and so it's, it's like new and fresh and you're just like, wow, cool. And then, you know, after a while, you know, you, you, I would see, you know, adults and I would kind of see as cool and then you know after a while you know you you i would see you know adults and i would kind of see as a teenager you know wow these adults really get jaded and kind of get locked in their in their thinking in their ways and uh i really saw you know a difference that and you know anthony robbins wrote a book and one of the most important things i think i learned from it was i'll always ask you the question of why um one of the reasons I love being a podcast host was from Larry King who said always be interested in other people find out what's going on why did they choose the way they went you know the wonderment the curiosity as you say and uh and it helped me with my businesses too

and I think you do that as well with the work that you do. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that you make a really solid point. I say in the book that Rilke, you know, a very famous poet from probably now at this point, almost a hundred years ago, says that it's the, to always be beginning, to treat the world with a beginner's mind. And we see that babies are little wonder factories, aren't they? I mean, they look like they're practically tripping all the time as they're seeing things that are going around. And their brains are constantly, their schema are always changing, and their brains are changing as they're experiencing this. And we do become jaded, our brains almost become jaded. And what happens is our brains start to experience things and say, I understand enough of that. So I can put it into this box and say, I understand enough of that so I can put

it into this box and say I've already experienced all of it, rather than really looking at the details and saying, wait, there's always something new that we can be finding about what we're observing and trying not to just run our life in autopilot, instead to try to be really, really aware of what we're seeing. And it does, it helps us in our relationships, it helps us in our work, it helps us be more creative, more innovative. So it has lots of benefits. And you've mentioned a couple of them. Yeah, it makes all the difference in the world. And, you know, I found that a lot of people get stuck in their ideas, they get stuck in their patterns, they get stuck in their thinking. You i mean i i i experienced the one the power of wonder every day when i turn on the news and look at some of the politics that go on in this

country there's a joke in a bunch line um but uh no being able to wonder and be curious about things i wrote uh something was really important to my um niece nephew when they graduated school i i wrote to them and i said listen listen, be a story collector. Collect stories. Learn from life. Stories are our life manual. Basically the owner's manual of life. That's how we learn about life.

It's through stories, other people's stories, the books and authors we have on the show like yourself. I wrote to them and I said, look, there's three things in life. You need to keep an eye on number one, what you know, number two, what you don't know. And number three is the most important thing that you need to focus on what you don't know. You don't know.

And that's an endless expansive universe. Um, and so those things will either help you, the things you don't know that you don't know by going out and seeking them and being in wonderment, as you put it, learning those things. And also the things that you don't look at will probably be, you know, they always say the bullet that hits you in a war is the one you

want here coming. So, you know, sometimes life throws you a wing ball that introduces you to a whole new concept of pain, of something that you've got to overcome or survive in order to get to the next level or survive. So I love the challenge of wonderment. And so you talk about how this applies through psychology, neuroscience, philosophy,

literature, and business. Tell us some more about that. Yeah. So I think that when you describe wonder, most people go, oh, yeah, I felt that. And we certainly see it. You know, we see it in religion. We see it in the description of like the story of Saul and the idea of scales falling from his eyes when he saw God. If you look at other religions, there's examples of Krishna and the way that people experience, I guess, religious awe.

But we see it in philosophy as well, even philosophy of art and the way that we observe the world. But I'm really keen as a consultant and as a business owner that people recognize that wonder at work can be really powerful. We love, while we might not have the language for it, we want to work in wonder-based organizations. We want to work in environments where people are humble, where they're empathetic, where they're generous, where they're innovative, where they're honest. These are all outcomes of people who experience lots of wonder. So people who are more wonder prone are more humble. And what's really interesting, Chris, is that people around them perceive them as more humble. So their

friends will say that they're more humble when they've experienced wonder. They're absolutely less materialistic and more generous. Who doesn't want more generous co-workers? They're better team members. They develop stronger relationships. And so wonder can be a really powerful mechanism for drawing together better teams, for creating more diverse and more inclusive teams, for being more tolerant, and just really, I guess, more willing to work with people that are different than you are. And I think that that's something that we, frankly, just need a lot more of. Definitely.

I mean, the way I approach the show is what can I learn from this person today? I get a front row seat to brilliant minds like yourself. Clearly, I'm not one of them. A brilliant mind. But, you know, I get mind uh but you know i get to i sit front row and i get to learn stuff and that's what i really love about my show and hopefully my audience does too um but uh you know for me asking questions and being curious and wondering about things was something that helped shape my business career and being uh my own my

own boss my own company and stuff uh before that, I would walk around companies and go, you know, why do we do it this way? And they'd be like, oh, I don't know. We always did it this way. The guy before me did it this way, and we've been doing it ever since. And there's lots of different examples of that in business books and other features.

But I would say, why do we do it this way? Really, when you look at the whole picture of maybe a pro a business process from front to end to, to do something in the business, you look at it and you go, you know, we really don't need these two middle parts of this middle part. Why do we do this stupid part in the part that seems to kind of just extend things, but it doesn't really add to anything. Maybe it takes away on our turnaround time.

And so, uh, asking questions like that was real important. And I was able to walk around companies and my own companies and go, why do we do it this way? And sometimes the answer would be, well, you're the idiot who came up with the process. And I'd be like, yeah, that's right. I did. Why do I, why did I design it this way? And sometimes I'd find that that was the best design, at least from what we had so far, or sometimes I was like, yeah, you can still tweak this. You can always be tweaking. You can always be improving.

You know, I always, I've always talked about how, you know, I never thought anybody could improve on the paperclip, you know, Hey, it's a wire thing. It holds paper together and beautiful job. Good job. Done. Finished over. No, you know, now they paint it, they make it all sorts of different things. They kind of give it a grid, I forget what the word might be,

but kind of a thing where it'll hold better. And there's a million different variations of paperclips. Who knew? And so the curiosity and asking the questions, how can businesses and companies, because a lot of people see this on LinkedIn, how can they get better at developing wonderment inside of their organizations? Yeah, I mean, I think we do a training on wonder at work, and some of the elements that we focus on are starting with each of those five components of wonder. So we talk about openness to experience

and how can we grow our sense of openness. Openness to experience is a personality trait. That means that half of it is genetic and then half of it is pretty much set by the time we're 25. But there are ways that we can grow that. One of the ways to do that is, as I mentioned, to be open to not just new experiences, but in particular, new ideas,

ideas that you might not always entertain. Another way to increase openness is to get really comfortable with nuance. One of the challenges with the way that we're taught in schools is we tend to be encouraged to find the single right answer. And that is what we're graded on and scored on. But what that does is it tends to grow thinkers who believe as adults that the single right answer, once they have it, then that's it. There's no more discussion could be. And I think the more that we embrace sort of that uncomfortable, mixed sense of, well, it could be one or the other,

and allow ourselves to hold two opposing ideas in our brains at the same time, that's very helpful. Being more curious, asking more questions, you talked about that, and being curious, not just about systems or processes, but about about people because when we're curious about people that's truly the heart of empathy is being able to just ask people questions about themselves and genuinely want to know the answers not just doing it because you're trying to fill time in a um in the elevator you know really that you want to know about this person and that's the that's the genuine empathetic sort of concern you want in a workplace. And then being able to create work environments and work cultures where you can truly focus and pare back your attention, where you don't feel that you're being distracted. That's another key element of

wonder at work. And I love to see some of the outcomes. Again, we've talked about things around humility, around honesty. Organizations that have higher wonder metrics are more ethical as well. And we certainly have seen lots of shenanigans with naughty businesses. And I think we'd probably like to see less of that. And so there's so many ways that we can bring this into the workplace. Also ends up with creating greater well-being. And we all know that it's something that we could have a lot more of in our workplaces and we're getting more of that working flexibly. But I think that there's a lot of potential untapped benefit if we were to look for more wonder in our

work. Definitely. And, you know, it's kind of, there's kind of also gratitude to it, isn't there, where you're grateful for what you have and you're wondering more about it. Is gratitude? Absolutely. Gratitude is a great wonder bringer. And one of the things I talk about in the book is about building a wonder practice. This isn't something that you just wait around to a light like, oh, someday I'll experience something that gives me a sense of wonder. No, it's really about a way of seeing seeing and so what you want to do is start to create a mindset that says i will experience wonder today if you prime yourself and say that you will find wonder you usually do and gratitude is one of those great ways um to bring more wonder into your life and you mentioned about storytelling if you link gratitude with narrative journaling so

basically writing about what you're grateful for but but writing it in a narrative way, meaning like a story about yourself, that becomes incredibly powerful. Because not only are you experiencing the sense of wonder in the moment when you're grateful, but when you go to write about it and reflect on it, your brain almost re-experiences that boost of that wonder boost again. And so really linking storytelling in with gratitude, with nostalgia is another way of remembering the things that happened before. And then even daydreaming, which is a great way to sort of almost tell a story about ourselves that's going to happen in the future. That's another great way to bring wonder practice into your life. And that's something you talk about in the book, daydreaming. Yeah, daydreaming is very positive. I've been fired from like 50 jobs because I was daydreaming, but it was basically, well, I was playing Call of Duty at work. No, I haven't been fired. That's just a joke. So you talk about how daydreaming is a gateway to wonder. This sounds

like a drug thing. Didn't the dog say that was bad when i was a kid there you go well and there is a whole chapter on psychedelics in the book so we can talk about that about that's a whole nother gateway some friends that will like this part there you go um but daydreaming is a is really powerful there's a couple of different types of daydreaming a few that aren't so great for us there's those kind that where we really ruminate where we think about something negative maybe where There's those kind that where we really ruminate, where we think about something negative, maybe where we're reflecting on that time we said something really stupid. I know, Chris, you've never done that ever in your life, but I have on occasion. Every damn day. Yeah. So where you said something really stupid, you're like, oh my

God, I can't believe you're running through that. Or maybe you're sort of fear of future daydreaming where you think I'm going to give a presentation is going to be so bad. They're going to chase me out with pitchforks. Those aren't so great. But the kind where we cast ourselves forward and imagine something, they call it positive, constructive daydreaming or PCD. And that positive, constructive daydreaming, when we imagine and we put ourselves in different scenarios that that we can construct and and help us imagine positive outcomes. That's very, very helpful. And it helps us really to be more resilient. It helps us to understand more about ourselves. And it is absolutely a wonder bringer because what happens is it allows us to imagine experiencing wonder in the future. And when we do, it sort of connects our brain in a particular way and gives us that little extra wonder boost.

There you go. I mean, that's wondering about things and pondering them and going, I don't know, what is that over there? It's how I found Twitter. I heard Twitter being talked about by a lot of different people. And it set me on this course for this social media person back in the day. And we started our podcast 13 years ago going on, I think it's 14 this year, um,

in August. Uh, and, uh, it's coming faster than I want it to. I mean, I, I don't mind being 14 years old,

but geez, can we slow this year down already? Uh, but, uh, you know, it, it,

it's a thing where it's put, set me on courses and change the course of my life, my business. There's probably a million stories I can point on courses and changed the course of my life, my business. There's probably a million stories I can point to it. But just sitting down sometimes is going, am I doing the right thing? Is it good there? So you talk about letting yourself be bored too in the book. And I've noticed this recent with the addiction problem I have with TikTok.

And sometimes I'm watching TikTok videos when I get up and I'm maybe making some food or something like that. And I'm like, you know, I'm, I've always been a person in my life where sometimes I just like the quiet. I just kind of like to sit, maybe enjoy my dogs, pet my dogs, play with them, throw the ball, go through moments where there's not enough space. And I've been finding, I've been filling it more with distraction. And there's a lot that you really learn when you don't be distracted

and you just kind of deal with yourself and you kind of deal with your thoughts and you kind of think about things. Absolutely. I mean, I joke that there's the expression to twiddle your thumbs, but it's almost an acronym. We don't twiddle our thumbs anymore. We employ them quite deftly on our phones, right? We don't sit around waiting for our dinner companion to show up anymore. We don't sit

in a doctor's office waiting, you know, leafing through all of the old magazines. We're on our phones. And the challenge is with that technology is the technology knows exactly how to get you to be surface curious. So it wants you to stay just on the top enough of an idea for you to then want to jump to the next one, to the next one. But the problem is we never fall down the rabbit hole. We never become deeply curious. And then we never allow ourselves to have that pared back from distraction. And this is one of the challenges. And that's why being bored really can be quite helpful because in fact, there's a comedian that did a whole bit about it's ridiculous that we would ever be bored because there's so much to be interested in. Of course, we're just constantly filling ourselves with all of this distraction. And when we're

distracted, our brain goes very much into autopilot. So there could be something that is really awe-inspiring that if we just gave it a little bit more attention, but we don't because we're always so distracted. So one of the first things, and I'm bad about this, Chris, I'll tell you, but to put down the phone for just a little while and to allow that sort of uncomfortable itch to crawl up the back of boredom and then to just sit with it and see what happens in your brain as you sit with it and see where your brain starts to take you that kind of daydreaming can be really really positive and i don't think we allow ourselves enough time for what i call slow thought because we're always just

so quick to hop on some device to fill our brains with whatever junk is being fed to us, as opposed to just allowing it to sort of wander in a positive way. There you go. What were you saying again? I was watching my phone. I was checking my email. I'm just kidding. Just kidding. I was not doing that. So this is really important. You know, sometimes there's a kind of a peacefulness, almost a meditation. It's not really meditating. Like I don't get any weird yoga positions because I can't, I'll probably hurt myself in my old age.

But, you know, just being alone with your thoughts, being cool with just relaxing and kind of letting the flow. And it's interesting how a lot of stuff will come from the subconscious to cue you or so the conscious will feed you and go, hey, you know, maybe you should look into this and all that sort of good stuff and watching and learning like i'm i'm a real collector of data uh i'll give you an example like last night i was buying uh being old like i am and drinking all the years i did i need a lot of uh hydration so there was a product i was buying i won't mention it because they're not paying me so screw them um there was a product I was buying. I won't mention it because they're not paying me.

So screw them. There's a product I was mentioning that hydrates you and this little thing you put in your water and stuff like that. And I take it every day to try and make sure I stay hydrated. Everything's about keeping all the factories working on the inside in the old age. And I've been concerned about it because I've been doing intermittent fasting, and I do intermittent fasting daily, but I was doing some extended ones last week, and I was really concerned about it triggering my, you know, taking me out of keto if it's got sugar elements in it. And I really think about it, I just ordered off Amazon. Well, this morning, I opened up Facebook, and I have opened up some sort of Pandora's box of the 5 trillion competitors that compete with this major brand. You find his stores that do almost the same thing.

But also I found finally one that popped up on my Facebook ads that won't take me out of keto and claims to not take me out of keto and doesn't have sugar in it. And it's supposed to be more designed for what i'm trying to do and so with that wonderment and it's you know instead i could be saying ah stupid ads on facebook but then i started noticing i'm like hey there's like a pattern here going on with these ads that are being fed to me and they're clearly because i was i bought that product but there's also some interesting you know there's one that was like hey 30 so now i'm actually going to find a better product because I paid attention. I was curious and I started reading the ads that were coming at me and hopefully I'll have a better life

experience with my health. And that's a key component of it is that this idea of priming, you basically primed yourself that this was something that you wanted to find. And this is one of the reasons why when we write down our goals, we're more likely to achieve them. I mean, this is research going back 50 years that they found that if you write down your goals, you're just simply more likely to achieve them. And this isn't some, of course, if you choose to find some sort of mystical connection, that's great. But there's also just a very neuroscientific backing to that, which is that if you tell your brain there's a reward for finding something, I want to find X, you know, I want to find more wonder, I want to find, you know, a new hydration solution, then your brain decides, okay, there's a reward at the end of this, it will, it will

commit more cognitive resources towards finding it. And so what's happened is you primed yourself to find it and it appeared. And this is one of the great pieces of research around what's known as a wonder walk. So researchers, scientists who took two groups of people, sent them on walks in nature, had one group just go on a walk with no priming. And the other group, all they said was one sentence prime, you're going to take a walk in a new environment and you're going to find something to feel a sense of wonder about. That's it. One sentence. The people who went on the wonder walks were more likely to find wonder, whereas the people who went on the regular walk ended up thinking about a trip they had to take or some issue with their work. And they're ruminating and missing everything on the walk as opposed to saying, I'm going to find

this thing. Now your brain is looking for it. And so really a lot about wonder and a wonder practice is just the power of priming, having your brain say, I am going to look for this. And there's a reward for myself when I do find it. There you go. And then what the other reward could be one of those Reese's meat cups. There you go. You have to reward yourself. That's usually what I do with Snickers bar or Reese's. Yeah. I'm going to start start dipping that in barbecue that's a callback joke people you have to go watch the front of the show uh the one thing other thing you talk about is stop chasing happiness and uh tell us more about that because maybe a lot of people need to hear that nowadays so much um so much these days of self-help is about being happy. Abundance theory is happiness. The whole self-help

industry tends to focus on finding happiness. But the problem is, is we are so bad at knowing what makes us happy, Chris. This is the problem. It's a term known as affective forecasting. So we think something will make us happy. And usually it's something right it's the it's the reese's meat cup it's the new pair of shoes it's the cold beer whatever it is it's usually a thing which is known as hedonic happiness um and we think that it will make us happy but the challenge is is especially with hedonic happiness once we have it it feels sort of good for a minute and then we go back to our our our baseline it's what's known as the hedonic treadmill not the kind that will allow you to eat lots of Reese's meat cups but it's a

different kind of treadmill and so this is treadmill that you're on this process and then you end up being right back where you started but the other challenge is that happiness is what's known as it is a positive emotion right it is always positively valence that's the term that they use and so sometimes you think i can't really be happy when there's a pandemic i can't be happy when there's a war in ukraine when we're watching footage about it but you can be in wonder and that's what's amazing about wonder is that wonder can actually be a steady state we can feel wonder even in terrible times and take good from it.

And so there's research that shows that people who suffer from PTSD are able to use wonder to help them metabolize what it is they've experienced. We can feel wonder that has a silver lining. So there was research during COVID that found that when we would see the terrible statistics from COVID,

but then when we saw the ways that from COVID, but then when we saw the ways that people supported one another, when we saw the healthcare workers putting their lives on the line for us and our wellbeing, then that gave us a sense of wonder while still being, you know, recognizing that there was a mixed emotion there. And that's one of the challenges. The happiness is just not a steady state. We're really bad at knowing what makes us happy. And it's not realistic all the time to have this constantly positive and sometimes toxically positive attitude. mixed with the buoyancy and happiness that we get from seeing what other people do and putting those together in the wonder package is much more sustainable, more achievable. And the bonus, a little bit like on a game show, but wait, Chris, there's more. It usually does end up making you happy at some point. But I believe that it's more sustainable and more easily achievable than

happiness. And what was that scientific term that you mentioned earlier? Affective forecasting. Affective forecasting. Does that include, I read or had an author on, we talked about how, you know, it's more about the journey than the destination and we're more happy heading towards the goal than we finally achieve it. Is that part of that? Yeah, it can be absolutely because frequently when we get to that point, then it feels like

there's a finality to it. Okay, well now what? Whereas again, yes, the journey is part of the enjoyment of it. That's also sort of that eudaimonic happiness. It's more about the sense of wellbeing. And also I think that wonder can be a journey for us always. It's more about the sense of well-being. And also, I think that wonder can be a journey for us always. It can be something that we're always seeking, a path that we're always on. A little bit like a meditation practice. You never arrive somewhere unless, you know, perhaps nirvana. I don't think any of us are getting there, except maybe if we're talking about the grunge band. I bought the album earlier yeah yeah there you go um so i think that it's it's about it is about the journey as a person and i think it's just about being more realistic on what it is that we will make us

feel a sense of wellness and a sense of of psychological richness that's another term that people are starting to use of a new type of happiness. I'm going to, I'm going to get a tattoo of that psychological richness, which I have none, but I'll have a tattoo. The, I think my psychiatrist is going to fight me on that one. The, and maybe we'll have to reschedule the front,

the frontal lobotomy, but maybe not. I don't know. The show might be funnier if I have a frontal. A bottle in front of me or a frontal lobotomy exactly yeah yeah you grew up in the same area i did was that dr demento did you grow up for that i i spent my teenage years listening to dr demento late at night i wasn't allowed to because it was uh you know i don't know why it was just adult yeah it was very it was kind of adult but it was it was uh just uh you know, I don't know why it was just, yeah, it was very, it was kind of adult, but it was, it was just, you know, whatever, but you'd also have to listen. I think I had to listen in the

middle of the night for some reason. I think it was the hours we kept or something, but yeah, Dr. Demento, what the boy that really brings me back. I should find out if that guy's still alive. Fish heads and fish heads. You know, this is really though an interesting conversation. I came home, I come home every day when I drive, you know, I go to the store, wherever I go. And in the garage, there's a gate for my dogs and it's a gate so they can go through the doggy doors and then go outside. But there's a gate there to keep them from escaping into the garage. And of course, out the front of the house and my my uh baby girl puppy uh who's still my puppy she's still the daddy's girl she will always be there waiting for me at the gate and she's there waiting when i leave and she's there waiting when i come back

and sometimes it's the two of them uh my huskies but usually it's just the one and uh you know i have a daddy's girl and i have the older dog who's just kind of like over me. She's like, the hell with this guy. I put up with him all my life. She used to be the baby with the other dogs. So I come pulling in the garage. The first thing I'll see is her sitting there going, daddy's home, daddy's home. She's so excited. And I usually don't think about it much because I'm like, I don't know, I'm listening to some audio book of some great author.

Or, you know, I'm thinking about, oh God, I got on loan with these groceries or whatever the hell I'm thinking about at the time. And I've never, I don't really appreciate it much. I'll smile a little bit, but I pulled in the thing and I saw her sitting there and I just broke out in this big smile and I was so happy. And I just thought, how wonderful is it? How beautiful is it that I have some, something in my life that cares about me, that loves me, that's sitting there waiting, that's just so happy to see me, that's so happy to be in my life and appreciates

everything I do. Well, not everything, because they're always like, you need to give us more treats. And I'm like, I gave you more treats, that sort of thing, but they're ducks. But it just struck me and I'm like, I really really need to appreciate this moment more i really appreciate this more because this is really true happiness you know eating another uh you know bone-filled meat reese's pieces cub probably isn't going to be quite as happy as coming home and seeing my dog especially when i pick the bones out of my teeth and that's it that's a that's a psychological turn nose savoring and actually i i was having a conversation with another podcast about the connection between savoring and wonder. So savoring is intentionally choosing to sort of mark that moment in your head so that you remember it in the future. feed into toxic positivity it's not saying that oh we're always going to have those moments it's recognizing that those moments are unique and to cherish them and to say i'm going to remember this i'm going to i'm going to really give it the attention that it deserves so that when we have to deal with the crap that always comes um we'll remember that moment and that really connects

into wonder and we talked about it before we can can savor the past through nostalgia. We can savor the present through gratitude. And we can savor the future through daydreaming. And so what you're talking about, that moment of savoring, is really powerful for us. And it connects directly to wonder. There you go. And as we go out, let's touch on one further thing to tease out. You write about allow your expectations to be flexible. Give us a short hit on that. Yeah. And so there's two sort of unique qualities.

They're not quite a part of our personality, but they do develop over time. And they're what are known as need for cognitive closure and need for cognition. So need for cognition is basically people who like to be nerdy. You like to learn stuff. You're hungry for information. You're always like, oh, I want to know more, more, more. Why, why, why? And the need for cognitive closure are people who as soon as they know the answer, that's it. They shut it down. They're happy to end it. And then they just don't want to learn anymore. Those are separate factors, but they're not on the same spectrum. But what you find is people who are high in need for cognitive closure are usually low in need for cognition and vice versa. Because obviously, it's basically people in cognition. It's about wanting to always learn more and know that there's always more to learn. Because when we do that, we feel more comfortable

with the gray area. We feel more comfortable with the nuance. We feel more comfortable with there being competing ideas and sometimes holding both of them at the same time. You know, we can even have, there can be two competing notions and they can both be right. And so having that idea, that level of flexibility, that mental flexibility is really powerful. I think just for starters, it will create a more tolerant society. It creates better communities. But it's also just good for our brain. It makes us more resilient. There's a really interesting study that showed that widows and widowers, when they reflected on the past of their spouses who had passed away, when they

remembered both the good and the bad about their spouse, they were able to better manage their grief. And so if we're willing to hold two ideas in our brain at the same time that maybe seem competitive, but that allow us to be really flexible and move between them. That's a really helpful for our wellbeing, both mentally and physically. There you go. I love it. You wrapped up just wonderfully. You know, it's, it's, it's so important and being able to hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time is so, is so important as well. You know, we do that. I do that with politics a lot. I sit and I can see both sides of the party. I've been on both sides of the party, parties, and I can see, I don't have to agree with them. I don't have to say they're

right or they're morally, ethically right, but I can see what the motivation is behind it or the arc of the motivation or design behind it. We've got a lot of authors on the show who write about you know some of the powers that be and and some of the people who control government and money and everything else through scotus rulings and and so you can see what their motivation is what they're trying to do and you can just understand the game more you don't have to holding two opposing thoughts thoughts in your head you know you can take a topic and go well i see why this side uh thinks this way and this side thinks this way and what their Ben Franklin features and benefits are. And, you know, you can kind of understand people better that way. You know, we've had both political party

people on the show. And for the most part, we stay away from the toxic ones. But, you know, we can hold those. And the same thing in business. I've been able to hold two opposable ideas at the same time. We go, well, you know, this system works good this way, this works this way. Um, it, it seems like, you know, we live in this universe, especially with social media, where we do that, uh, uh, what's the term where we, where we basically seek out the news or we seek out the data and information that we want that just validates what we already know or validates the assumption that we've made and uh this is something we need to get away from and wondering about things and going i

don't know am i right am i crazy which is pretty much you know what my psychiatrist runs by me every day uh you know is is really important and and you know i don't have all the answers i'm not that you know i learned that as a business owner, uh, and owning my companies, I'm not the corner of all the great ideas. In fact, I've got some really bad ones too, and I paid for it very expensively. Uh, so, you know, having, collaborating with other people, having them have better ideas, finding out more about them and people are a rich tapestry. Human beings are rich tapestry. That's the thing I love about the show and what Larry King, you know, mentioned, you know, people are interesting. They, they, the journeys they take, the turns they take, the ways they get to where they are in life, the, the past they chose because maybe they were

curious and maybe they just accepted social programming, but you know, how did they get here? And, uh, pretty much is what my psychiatrist says again, every day, how did you get here? And why can't you just leave me alone? But I pay him by the hour. So there you go. Then I walk out in the room and in the waiting room and go, what if this is as good as it gets? And then I leave. Anyway, wonderful to have you on the show, Monica.

Any parting thoughts or teases you want to do on the book before you go? No. You know what? I guess the thing that I want to lead people is that whatever they are experiencing today, whatever they see, whatever they think they've figured out about the world, that there is more, that there's so much more that they just don't understand. There's so much more to be, to learn, to be curious about, to be in wonder about. And so I'd just encourage everyone to just look for more.

There you go. Look for more, which is usually what I do in the couch when I need some spare change. There you go. Well, it's wonderful to have you on. Thank you very much for coming on the show, Monica. Thank you, Chris, for having me. Have a great day. There you go.

Give us your dot coms too so people can find you on the interwebages. Yep. So it's monica-parker.com. And you can also find me on LinkedIn and Instagram and Twitter at Monica C. Parker. There you go. And be sure to check it out, guys. Order up wherever fine books are sold. The Power of Wonder, the extraordinary emotion that will change the way you live, learn, and lead. Great for personal life and your business. I think most leaders should read this because, you know, wondering about things, thinking about things.

I think I read recently the biography of the CEO of Disney, the really successful recent one who actually just went back as the CEO. And he had kind of the same sort of thing. He wondered about that, you know, the beautiful sort of imaginary state of what has created Disney and everything else. And that helped him build a better company. the beautiful sort of imaginary state of what has created Disney and everything else. Uh, and, and that helped him build a better company. Uh,

also, uh, probably should give you guys a note, uh, on Friday, the, uh, February 10th,

2023, over a second billionaire on the show. He's wrote the book. How far do you want to go? Lessons from a common sense billionaire. He's going to be on the show. Uh, I think there's a third billionaire working on that we're talking to too.

So be sure to check that out. It's always good to have billionaires on the show. Just put me in my place and tell me how broke I am. No, I'm just kidding. That's not going to happen. I'm sure he's a wonderful guy. So look forward to that on the show as well. Be sure to go to goodreads.com, Fortuness Chris Foss, youtube.com, Fortuness Chris Foss, all those crazy places on the internet that you can find us. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe and we'll see you next time or else. No, I'm just kidding. We'll see you next time.