The State We're Really Seeking

My confession.

When I first heard the terms wild swimming, forest bathing… even grounding… I thought they were exciting new concepts.

Then I realised wild swimming was just counting to seven before ducking your head under the freezing swimming hole at the waterfall… or jumping off the wharf. Forest bathing was simply walking from A to B, and the bush happened to be the quickest route. Grounding? That was your jandals breaking halfway through the walk, so you went barefoot.

I grew up in New Zealand, so I don't mean to be flippant. Nature matters deeply for our health. But somewhere along the way we've crowded it out of everyday life. Now we have to search for it, give it a name, schedule it into our calendars, and sometimes even pay for it. What was once simply living has become "wellness."

I also grew up before the digital world arrived. Christmas holidays where if you didn't pack it, you went without. The Road Runner truck came twice a week with bread, milk and ice cream. No mobile phones, no endless notifications, no screens. Certainly no organic matchas. Just sunscreen, water, and a whole lot of time outside.

Looking back, I can see how those days naturally regulated my nervous system. We breathed deeply without thinking about breathwork. We laughed until our stomachs hurt. We played until it got dark. We slept because we were tired.

Nobody called it wellbeing.

It was just Tuesday.

Looking back, I realise what those experiences gave me wasn't simply a love of the outdoors. They were quietly building something much deeper. Years later, I found language for it in Martin Seligman's work on positive psychology. He describes wellbeing not as something you buy, but as a state you cultivate through positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment.

Those aren't things you buy. They're experiences you choose, create and practise.

Of course, those experiences don't only happen in nature. They can come through work, family, community, creativity, or sport. But when I reflect on my own life, it was my adventures outdoors—hiking mountain ranges, diving beneath the surface to another world, kayaking and swimming—that switched all of those things on at once.

You're completely absorbed in the moment because the environment demands your attention. There's no room for overthinking yesterday or worrying about tomorrow. You're surrounded by people who become your tribe because everyone's safety and success depends on one another. You discover what you're capable of. You leave feeling connected, accomplished and alive.

Maybe that's the point. We don't need to keep searching for the next wellness practice. We need to deliberately create more experiences that cultivate wellbeing. Experiences that ask something of us. For me, those experiences happen outdoors. For someone else, they might happen in music, sport, art or service.

The point isn't the activity—it's the state it creates.

Wellbeing isn't something we find.

It's something we cultivate through choosing experiences that change us. We cultivate, one meaningful experience at a time.