By Leo Babauta

The human mind likes order and certainty, and so it turns the miracle of life into the mundane.

The mind often doesn’t want to see things anew each moment — it wants to categorize everything and feel that life is predictable. Now, I’m not saying that’s how the mind always is … but it does have this tendency.

We turn magic into dullness. The divine into the routine.

This isn’t a problem, but rather a chance to fall in love with life anew, each day.

Let’s talk abut how to become more enchanted by life, every single day.

How We Turn The Magical into the Mundane

The world is naturally a place that can evoke wonder.

Evidence #1: a child when she first sees a bunny, a dandelion, a rainbow. The child lights up in delight! This is our natural state, to find delight and wonder in things. We read books about magic, and play make believe games with knights and princesses and dragons and wizards. It’s not until later that the world teaches us to not believe in magic.

Evidence #2: traveling to a new place, you might find wonder in the new landscape, the incredible buildings, the art, the creativity of the people in that area. Even as adults, we can be filled with wonder, in so many ways!

Then why don’t we feel it on a daily basis? Because it’s safer to see things as ordinary, dull, boring. It’s a form of control: I already know this stuff, it’s no longer in the unknown for me.

And so we turn off our curiosity. We lose the ability to really see something, to really try to know someone new.

It’s easier if we categorize things into the known, and turn it into the mundane. It’s comfortable. And that’s completely fine! There’s nothing wrong with the mind’s powerful tendency to turn the miraculous into the ordinary. Unless you’d like to feel enchanted by life again.

How to Start to Reverse Our Tendency

If you wanted to stop thinking everything is so ordinary and boring … how could you change that tendency?

Start to see things with new eyes (“beginner’s mind”) — as if seeing things for the first time. See people you pass on the street with fresh eyes as well, and wonder what they’re like.

When you walk around your house, notice things as if you’d never encountered such magical objects before.

When you go outside, imagine this were the first time you’d ever seen a tree, a cloud, a car. What magical things!

When you do a video call, or message someone, or see a social media video online … imagine how your great grandparents would feel about such magic!

When you’re flying in the sky, or traveling in a vehicle that goes faster than the fastest animal, or have a thousand things on your todo list … can you realize the miracle of that?

How to Practice Becoming Enchanted

You start by noticing how ordinary you take everything to be. How much you assume you know something. How un-special things have become to you. And how that affects you each day.

Then set a reminder of some kind (i.e. a note that says, “Yer a wizard, Leo!”), and practice opening your eyes with wonder. Practice experiencing things as if for the first time. Taste your food as if this were the first time you’d ever tasted food!

And then see what happens. Can you fall in love with life, and recapture a sense of magic and wonder? Can you feel a sense of the enchanted all around you?

It’s there, waiting for you to see it.