409. The Real Reason You're Disenchanted With Your Life (And How to Break the Spell)

I had my grandbaby boys, Eli and Noah, this weekend, and watching them, I got reminded of something. Little kids are either completely enchanted with everything or completely disenchanted with everything — there's no in-between. We rode bikes in the rain, ran through mud puddles, played way too many downs of flag football with rules that kept changing, and read Green Eggs and Ham to a five-year-old who could not understand why this man kept getting asked the same question over and over.

It made me realize something about why it's so much harder for us as adults to be that easily delighted.

It's not because we're broken. It's because our brains are wired for it, and so is the device in our pocket, and so is the culture we're swimming in. Here's what we get into:

Why your brain's primary job was never to make you feel enchanted — it's scanning for threats, and it will always give more weight to what's wrong than what's right

How the "false self" or ego chimes in on top of that, adding its own list of things to worry about and be afraid of

Why the phone in your pocket supercharges all of it, telling you the same story your brain already wants to tell you

A practical tool for breaking the spell in the moment — asking what your future, wisest self would say looking back on this

Why real enchantment isn't pretending everything is fine or denying real suffering — it's the capacity to stay open and alive to your life even when the hard thing is real

You don't have to wait for your circumstances to change to start practicing this. You can start today, just by noticing how often your brain goes looking for the problem instead of the gift.

Links Mentioned:

Register for The Art of Enchantment workshop (starts next week): https://www.ediewadsworthcoaching.com/enchantment

Join The Art of Enchantment Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theartofenchantment

Follow along with the Enchanted series on Instagram: @ediewadsworth

Subscribe to the House of Joy Substack: https://ediewadsworth.substack.com/

SEEDS: Download the free SEEDS app (https://tinyurl.com/RONSeedsApp) and take one small step today: plant your first seed and see what God can grow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices