The Beauty of Connection: Lessons from my 30-Day Treasure Hunt
I recently asked a simple question to my eating disorder recovery support group, WISDOM:
What do you want to embody?
The response from the group was resounding. Everyone said…
Connection.
I could sense there was longing to continue to deepen connection with one's body's inner cues, emotions, loved ones and the wider world.
Maybe you feel this longing for connection too. I know I do.
My 30-Day Treasure Hunt: Finding Beauty in Everyday Life
This longing is why over the course of a few weeks last year, I bean sharing on my Instagram stories a personal 30-day treasure hunt experiment where I was intentionally looking for beauty in my day-to-day life to spark feelings of connection, gratitude, presence, awe and play.
The idea behind this "challenge" came when I was walking on the mountain. I felt so stuck, disconnected and preoccupied with ruminative, dense thought loops.
I felt the sudden urge to step out of my head and take in the world around me. In that moment, beauty enveloped me: vibrant Spring flowers, curling leaves, rocks within rocks, the vast blue sky, and the ocean undulating beneath me.
The lights turned on,
I thought to myself: "I want to build my life around beauty!"
And so, for that full month I consciously created a life filled with beauty.
The key ingredient was not just noticing what catches my senses but how beauty feels in my body.
Each time I connect what I see and feel with my inner experience, I’m rewiring my brain and body to more consistently notice moments of wonder, appreciation, and inspiration.
Indeed, if we hold the intention to bring more connection into our lives, it's helpful to focus on the moments that bring this aspiration to life rather than the moments that don't.
For such an intention to sprout from seed and blossom into fruition of possibility, we need to nourish it by offering our curious attention.
If we desire more connection in our lives, we need to actively connect with our intention through adding in practices that foster inner and outer connection.
Learning about beauty has been an expansive and transformative journey for me. This awareness has continued as a timeless and sustaining practice that I have dedicated to for the rest of my life.
Since embracing beauty on the daily, I've discovered a few things along the way; and I wish to share my three core insights with you.
Seeking Beauty, Finding Connection: 3 Insights for Soul Nourishment
Here are three core lessons I've discovered through treasure hunting:
Embracing beauty is a pathway to thinking bigger
Beauty forges new connections
Beauty is infectious
1. Embracing beauty is a pathway to thinking bigger
When we connect with feelings that beauty evokes, like awe, our default mode network deactivates.
This is the part of the brain associated with self-perception so when it calms down, it allows us to step outside our small thoughts and ruminations and be wholly present in the moment. Here's a study that speaks to this.
This tells us that the immersive and captivating nature of awe stimuli can reduce self-reflective thought and self-referential processing.
We feel a sense of vastness, a feeling of smallness and deep interconnection. We are granted perspective; our problems no longer feel as big and daunting.
Perhaps you have had that experience that knocked you momentarily from the ordinary and forces you to reconsider your understanding of the world and your place in it (this is why psychedelic experiences are so powerful).
As our perspective opens, we transform from a narrow focus—which is associated with more a fight, flight, freeze nervous system state—to a wider focus. Healing is the process of thinking bigger.
Which brings me to the next point...
2. Beauty forges new connections
Beauty activates the vagus nerves, a bundle of nerves running from the brain to the large intestines, which is linked to creativity, emotional intelligence, resilience, self-regulation, social engagement and higher-order thinking.
When we encounter beauty, our jaw relaxes, our eyes widen and our skin tingles with chills. This signals our nervous system to shift—from a defensive, narrow focus to one of safety, presence and regulation. Our entire perspective expands.
The vagus nerve originates at the top of the spinal cord and connects to various organs, like the heart, lungs, and digestive system. When activated, it brings that warm, expansive, bubbly feeling in the chest we experience when we're moved by music, sparked by inspiring, new ideas or inspired by another person's kindness.
It makes us want to naturally reach out and connect.
Stimulating the vagus nerve enhances our ability to think creatively. And at the heart of healing and transformation is creativity—it's the process of making new connections and building something fresh.
The healing journey itself is about envisioning and creating a new reality, which is as creative as it darn gets!
And when our intention is to cultivate more connection, that new reality will inevitably include more meaningful, trusting, and loving connections with ourselves and others.
This leads me to the final core takeaway that I've observed from my treasure hunt...
3. Beauty is infectious
As I shared my treasures on IG, I started to receive messages from people around the world sending me pictures and reflections of the beauty they had found.
Beauty leads to more beauty. Beauty, as a force, wants to ripple out into the wider world to connect us. Beauty feeds connection.
In fact, Dacher Keltner who is the author of Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, suggests that we survived not by being cutthroat or the fittest but by being the kindest.
We have survived over the course of evolution thanks to our abilities to cooperate, form communities and create culture—all spurred by feelings of awe, curiosity, compassion and interconnection.
Our capacity for caring, humility and play is built into our brains and bodies. Interestingly, Steven Porges, who put the Polyvagal Theory and the vagus nerve on the map, calls this it the "nerve of compassion".
Paying attention to beauty can decrease feelings associated with depression and anxiety like isolation, stress, fear, rigidity, overwhelm and disconnection, and increase feelings of generosity, clarity, reverence, altruism and kindness.
At the core, healing is the path of befriending ourselves and life.
It seems that cultivating more beauty in our everyday lives "leads us to appreciate what is most humane in our human nature." — Keltner
So, you might be asking, how can I embrace more beauty in my life?
Great question!
Now that we’ve explored the impact of beauty on connection, let’s look at some practical ways you can bring more beauty into your own life.
But before I share them, here are few things to remember...
Incorporating beauty-filled wonders into daily life is strikingly easy. In fact, you’re probably already doing it and it's not as rare as you think.
Most people experience mini doses of beauty pretty regularly. And the more we intentionally look out for beauty, the more we perceive it and feel its embrace.
Beauty leads to more beauty.
Another myth about experiencing deeper connection is that you can’t orchestrate it and can only really experience it spontaneously. However, you indeed can find it and plan for it.
Learning how to hold expansive feelings with a sense of calm, regulated capacity is a practice in and of itself, especially if the nervous system has been a state of survival and shutdown for a long-time. This takes time, titration and self-awareness. This is something I work on with my clients.
With that being said, everyone can experience beauty. It is in your DNA.
So, here are 10 ways you can cultivate deeper, more beautiful connections in your life:
Listen to a piece of music that gives you the chills. Added bonus: move your body to that song.
Think of someone who inspires you. You don't have to leave the home - simply thinking of someone you love or recalling a time when you were inspired by another can evoke feelings of wonder and appreciation.
Explore gorgeous views, walking trails or bodies of water in your area. Time in nature is a direct portal to more beauty.
Sing or dance with other people; be in unison with others.
Dream into and be inspired by the future life you envision and desire through journalling or vision boarding.
Spend time with people who inspire you to step into the highest version of yourself.
Meditation practices that focus on sending compassion and loving kindness to others.
Shifting the focus from body image to your body experience. I speak more about this in this Instagram post.
Devote your time, energy or resources to others.
Create your own treasure hunt! (If you do, feel free to share with me and let me what beauty you’ve found in your day!).
Is there anything that you have found to support your capacity experience more beauty-full connection that I didn't include on the list? I would love to hear your additions and what has worked for you! Simply comment below.
As David Whyte says, "Beauty especially occurs in the meeting of time with the timeless..."
Beauty especially occurs in the meeting of time with the timeless; the passing moment framed by what has happened and what is about to occur, the scattering of the first spring apple blossom, the turning, spiraling flight of a curled leaf in the falling light; the smoothing of white sun-filled sheets by careful hands setting them to air on a line, the broad expanse of cotton filled by the breeze only for a moment, the sheets sailing on into dryness, billowing toward a future that is always beckoning, always just beyond us. Beauty is the harvest of presence.
— excerpt from "Beauty" from Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
May you never forget how beautiful you are, and how your presence makes this world even more beauty-full.
