Adding Awe
Short reflection exploring how awe impacts health
Behavior scientists study the impact of positive emotions on physical and psychological health. A new focus and growing body of research from Dacher Keltner and his team at University of California, Berkeley explores the emotion awe and its impact on well-being. Research suggests that awe can be both profound and accessible. It can arise in simple everyday moments – through nature, collective gatherings, art, music, and experiences that connect us to something larger than ourselves.
Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.
Dacher Keltner
Essential Learning Points
In Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, Dacher Keltner describes eight common sources of awe:
- Big Ideas
- Nature
- Music
- Moral Beauty
- Life and death
- Spirituality
- Collective Effervescence
- Visual Design
He offers practical ways to invite more awe from each of these categories into ordinary, everyday life. His work reminds us that well-being is shaped not only through effort and habit, but also through moments that invite us to pause, notice and feel connected.
Moments of awe are often simple and much more available than we expect. Even brief moments have been linked to reduced stress and increased perspective and meaning.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
Albert Einstein
Key Takeaways
Awe does not require extraordinary moments. In the context of wellness, awe offers something powerful: a shift in awareness — and often, that is where change begins. Conditions that support finding awe in the ordinary:
- Attention: Being fully present with undivided focus
- Wait: Slowing down, pausing
- Exhale and Expand: Deepen and amplify whatever sensations you are experiencing
These moments can and do exist even in the messiness of life; they can be helpful even when (possibly especially when) things are not perfect or easy. That is actually when we can get the most benefit from looking for awe in the ordinary.