Facebook groups like the 'Weird, Wonder And Strange' and the 'Weird Wonder And Strange 2' are the perfect examples of just how generous the world is with throwing things at us to think about. And often, we don’t even need to lift a finger to realize there are plenty of interesting things happening around us. Whether it’s oddities within nature that capture our attention, architectural wonders that consistently surprise us, or the power of human kindness — there are so many elements left to discover about our home planet.

But more often than not, we get stuck in our routines, sounds, and sights that swiftly make our daily living boring. Taking the same commute and speaking to the same people each morning several times per week means we become so familiar with our surroundings, we may miss the magic around us. So it makes perfect sense that we humans should strive to learn and experience more, right?

That’s why social media projects like this are bound to catch our eye. Sharing interesting facts and images we never knew about before makes us feel stimulated to find yet another brand new sight to see. And as it turns out, our brains are actually wired to appreciate and seek out novelty.

As Joshua Klapow, Ph.D., a psychologist and creator of Mental Drive, previously explained to Bored Panda, we naturally adapt to things that happen frequently and regularly. "We literally are hardwired to move the common occurrences into the background of our consciousness so that we can look out for novel things," he said. "This happens because things that are not obvious, that are not common, that stand out, could pose a threat to our well-being, or could be something really rewarding."

Psychologist Klapow pointed out that we often take things we do and see every day for granted, "only to pay more attention to those actions and interactions that grab our attention. The obvious goes in the background, so we reserve brain bandwidth to notice the novel, standout occurrences in our life."

Seeking new experiences — even comparatively minor ones — also makes us feel genuinely delighted. "There is a connection between novelty and happiness," Dr. Laurie Santos, a cognitive scientist who teaches the "Psychology and the Good Life" course at Yale, told GQ.

"Novel stimuli tend to activate regions of our brain that are associated with rewards.” But there’s more than just the dopamine rush: "Novel things also capture our attention … you’re more likely to notice things and be present. There’s lots of evidence that simply being more present can improve our mood and happiness," Santos explained.

Moreover, novel experiences seem to be beneficial for the development of our brains and our moods. Clinical psychologist and affective neuroscientist Dr. Aaron Heller is a co-author of a study that tracked enlisted subjects from New York and Miami and monitored their spirits. The researchers then did a further analysis in which they took notice of how many new places participants visited.

"What we found was that for every person, on days when they displayed greater exploration, greater 'roaming entropy', they reported feeling happier. It's as simple as that," he said. "The experience of novelty, or going to places you had never been before, actually seemed to have an even larger association with positive emotion on that day." The best part? People who are in a good mood are more motivated to explore, and those who explore more tend to have better moods. These positive emotions also tend to seep into the next day, and even the day after that.