Ditch the Positivity Parade. Harness the Power of Beauty to Build Resilience Instead.

5 Ways Small Moments of Beauty Rewire Your Brain & Build Lasting Inner Strength

On any given evening, you will find me gazing up at the sky. The waning, lengthening light, the colors that dance and shift, the clouds as they move. I am an unabashed sky watcher.

Beauty is all around, and it’s my life’s mission to find as much of it as I can, then create even more, and share it all with you and the world.

Unfiltered actual colors from my front yard.

If we were to hang out together, I’d probably pause in at least one parking lot to whip out my phone and take a photo of something in bloom.

Some days I go to the nearby river and just listen with my eyes closed to the gentle lapping of the water against the rocks.

I take every chance I can to soak in beauty like a sponge. I consider it a survival skill.

I read poetry out loud to empty rooms. I find joy in the little pencil caddy of colors all ready to go on my desk. I make cottage cheese ice cream and insist on eating it in the one patch of my garden that is blooming right now.

A decade ago, I was so excited to see real Welsh sheep 🐑 in person when I was in the UK, I loudly exclaimed, “SHEEPIES!” and clapped my hands like a 5-year-old. Trust me… I have never lived that one down.

I have a truly relentless belief that the absolute best way to live a life of meaning is to savor each moment we are in.

To train our souls to lean into and attune to beauty, no matter how small.

Because resilience isn’t just about grit and getting through hard things. It’s about the courage to keep noticing what’s still good, even in the middle of them.

And I practice being very easy to delight and very hard to deter.

But this isn’t just being a master “hopeless” romantic. This is based on ACTUAL brain science.

Here are 5 ways beauty helps our brains build the resilience to thrive.

---

I’m getting super nerdy here. Hope that’s OK. Brains are just so fascinating. I’m saving my favorite points to last. 📚

01 | Beauty encourages neuroplasticity

Our brains are not static. They are always changing. Beauty and wonder stimulate the release of dopamine and norepinephrine. Both of these chemicals signal to the brain: “Hey! This is worth paying attention to and remembering.”

It can help us form new connections, break old loops, and update our “operating system” so to speak.

02 | Beauty and wonder disrupt unhelpful thought patterns.

If you haven’t heard me talk about this before, this is SUCH a game changer.

Our brains have a default mode network (DMN). It is a brain system tied to those loops that play in our heads… things like ruminating, worrying, or replaying past mistakes.

But when we encounter beauty and wonder, the awe we experience quiets this network, giving us a break from the unhelpful parts of our internal monologue and creating room for new insights and perspectives.

03 | Beauty can help us regulate our nervous system.

You might have heard the parasympathetic nervous system, aka our rest-and-digest mode.

Visual beauty—particularly scenes from nature or art that evoke calm or joy—can actually help us shift into that calmer state and help our brains understand we are not running from a bear.

This is why even 10 seconds spent noticing a shaft of light, listening to a bird’s song, or the studying the pattern in your coffee foam can act as a mini-reset for your nervous system.

🎨 PRO-TIP: Pulling out your watercolors and just watching them flow into one another on the page and playing with color blending is a way to actively engage this dynamic even more.

04 | Beauty retrains our brains to pay attention to the world around us differently.

There’s a part in our brains called the reticular activating system, or RAS for short. It helps filter out irrelevant information so we can focus on things that matter. It's what allows us to have a conversation in a crowded room while filtering out background noise.

Friends, this blew my mind. 🤯 No pun intended. Practicing intentional beauty-finding actually retrains our brain’s RAS.

Resilience… it not just about bouncing back. It is about shifting the way we see and interact with the world around us.

When we intentionally look for beauty in the everyday moments of our lives, our RAS starts to prioritize its filter towards beauty, wonder, and goodness.

Over time, this retraining can shift our baseline experience of the world from being threat-focused to being meaning-focused.

Toxic positivity, move right on over. Functional neurobiology has entered the chat.

05 | Beauty activates the reward center of our brains, specifically the ventral striatum.

This might be my favorite nerdtastic fact.

Ever heard of dopamine dressing? The idea that dressing can boost brain motivation. Here’s why that trend actually works.

Beauty lights up the reward center of our brains, where dopamine gets released. Dopamine is the feel-good, motivation neurotransmitter.

This explains why spending time looking at beautiful art or landscapes can boost our energy and motivation, especially when we feel burned out or blah.

Blah is a totally technical term.

When I learned this, it was such an aha for me.

Sometimes, when I struggle to get something done, I get myself going by making it “pretty”.

When I took my MBA accounting course decades ago, I colored my spreadsheets. I wanted to color the books, not just balance them.

I didn’t know it then, but I was using beauty as a powerful brain hack. Because the only numbers I love working with are the ones that tell me what colors I’m creating with.

Don’t feel like cleaning, make something in the space more beautiful.

Feeling sluggish, put on your favorite cozy blouse.

Struggling to get started, do your work outside, surrounded by flowers.

Beauty lighting up the ventral striatum, increasing motivation and action, explains a huge part of why the neuroscience behind romanticizing your life and finding everyday wonder is so powerful.

Ok. Enough theory. Here are 3 practical ways to use intentional beauty-finding to make your life more magical.

• Find an Aesthetic Anchor
  Study a piece of visual art. It could be a painting, a children’s book, a photo online, a coffee table book, an illustration, a piece of fabric. Really look at the details. Notice how this piece makes you feel. Then journal one simple sentence that reflects your felt experience. I love doing this in between big tasks as a brain break. Kind of like if you’ve ever sampled fragrances in a department store and in between you sniff some coffee beans.

• Savor a Sunset
  Having a hard week. Pack a simple picnic, even if it is just for your backyard. And eat something yummy while the sun is setting. Focus on the color of the light, the clouds. How the air feels. Getting out of our heads and into our senses is so powerful. Beauty can be a multisensory, embodied experience.

• Create a “Begin Again” Ritual
  This is my favorite reset hack because it interrupts the loop of negative self talk. Every time I procrastinate or get distracted, instead of punishing myself—I make a favorite cup of tea and snack served on fine china, light a candle, tidy my space and make restarting an exercise in self-care, kindness, and building self-trust.

What are ways you like to intentionally find beauty in your everyday world? Do you have any tips? Share them in the comments.

---

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to those of you who have subscribed and are supporting me to do this work. I can only do this because of your generosity. The Wonder Habit® isn’t only fun creative challenges, it is where I offer strength for the season we are in and write words to help us build a better story together.

Share this post, comment, become a free subscriber. It is vital and helps us keep growing. There is never any obligation. Just you BEING here is amazing.

But if you have found value here and are able, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. There are some fun perks, but you’re really supporting me to continue to create content about wonder, creativity, and courage for the times we are in.

If you can’t make a monthly commitment, but you’d like to offer a one-time gift of support… you can do so via my PayPal by clicking the button below ⬇️.

Again and again, never any obligation. Thank you for the gift of you being here. 😘