5 reasons you should emb

5 reasons you should embrace awe in your life

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. ~ Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and author.

race awe in your life

 

There are at least five reasons you should embrace awe in your life. Just to name a few:

  • Awe is an emotion that can make you happier by putting things in perspective.
  • Awe can make you healthier.
  • Awe can contribute to critical thinking.

Spring is coming, and it might be a good time to consider the role of awe in your life to enhance your well-being. Figuring out how to experience awe in my everyday life has certainly helped me feel better about the world and my place in it.

Awe was not really a topic for research twenty years ago, but interest is growing. Physically, awe activates the vagal nerves in your parasympathetic nervous system. Your body reacts differently to awe than when experiencing other emotions such as anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear, or sadness, inducing different facial expressions and sounds.

Definition of awe

Today we think of the word awe as evoking reverential respect and wonder rather than fear, but that was not always true. The word seems to be a combination of the Old English “ege” meaning terror or dread, mixed with Old Norse “agi” to be upset or afraid, eventually combining into the modern English word, “awe.” Somewhere along the way, the word awe lost its terror, though it hangs around in the word “awful.” Instead, awe and its slangy counterpart, awesome, have much more positive connotations than the old interpretation of the word.

In his book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life (2023), Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley says, “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world.”

Awe can be inspired by small things. Walt Whitman described the beauty and cycles of the natural world as “everyday miracles” in Leaves of Grass (1855). In “Auguries of Innocence” (1863) the poet William Blake wrote about seeing a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower. Sometimes awe can be spontaneously induced when we hear an incredible piece of music, watch an amazing athlete perform, or experience an artist creating in the moment.

Awe can also be inspired by big things. Looking at the myriads of stars in a bright clear desert sky while standing on top of a Sahara dune. Watching a child take their first steps. Feeling the power of the Colorado River coursing through the Grand Canyon carving the spectacularly colored walls over the last 6 million years. Experiencing the majesty of the Andes from the ruins of Machu Pichu on a misty morning.

Below are five reasons to invite awe into your awareness.

Reason Number 1: Awe can make you happier

Feeling awe can reduce your stress and boost your mood and play a positive role in enhancing your well-being. Remembered experiences of awe can reduce stress reduced for weeks afterward. The emotion deactivates the default neural network in our cortex, quieting the critical voice in our head that tells us we are not worthy or capable. What academic wouldn’t want more of that in their life? I certainly do.

Reason Number 2:  Awe can make you healthier

Simply taking some time to savor your life, awe can help reduce your stress. According to Dr. Keltner, awe has health benefits that include releasing the feel-good hormone oxytocin, slowing our heart rate, and deepening our breathing. Feelings of awe may lower levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a marker of inflammation causing chronic health problems. Awe appears to counteract negative emotions and mitigate feelings of loss by elevating you from everyday worries about material things. Jonathan Haidt calls the emotion a “reset button for the brain.”

Reason Number 3: Awe helps you put things in perspective

Awe puts life and everyday problems into perspective. It can lift you up and transform your core being. It’s beyond contentment. It’s effervescent and ineffable. For me, it’s a small, still moment when everything is beyond OK. I am not worrying about the next best step for my work, what to write, or whether I am going to get sick and die in the near future. For just one transcendent instant, everything is all right in my world.

Reason Number 4: Awe can make you a better critical thinker

As a child, I was an explorer prone to wandering off from my family, causing a great deal of consternation to my parents on different occasions. I couldn’t help it. I was curious about the world and often felt in awe of the small things I saw in the natural world. Why were red and black ants different? Where did the ocean end and how could waves just keeping coming one after another? Was that nut something I could eat? (And, yes, I tried eating some that were truly awful.) It made me want to know more. From childhood on, it turns out that experiencing awe can facilitate learning.

A 2017 study by Piercarlo Valdesolo, Andrew Shtulman, and Andrew S. Baron attempts to synthesize theories on the role of awe in scientific learning. They found the literature suggests awe might be unique in motivating scientists to explore and explain the physical world. A 2018 study by Sara Gottlieb, Dacher Keltner, and Tania Lombrozo also found awe motivates scientists to answer questions about the natural world. Awe provokes reassessments of preconceived explanatory ideas.

Reason Number 5: Awe can make you feel more connected and generous

In 2015, Keltner co-authored a study with Paul K. Piff, Pia Dietze, Matthew Feinberg, and Daniel M. Stancato, and found experiencing awe increased prosocial behavior and decreased feelings of entitlement. They wrote awe increases “inclinations to share, care, and assist [and] further enable individuals to function more effectively within social collectives.”

As Dr. Keltner notes, “Our public discourse and academic discourse sort of forgets about how much good people can and want to do.” Small gestures like giving up a bus seat to a pregnant woman, helping an old person get groceries into their car, and watching someone in a fast-food line allow a harried traveler to go ahead of them help us remember the goodness in the world. Noticing moments of human kindness can induce awe and make us want to help others. Surprisingly, just reading about others’ altruistic actions can create awe and help us be kinder.

Conclusion

We can all use a little more awe in our lives. Awe makes me healthier, calmer, happier, more well-adjusted, less narcissistic, and less stressed. Giving back to my various communities from a place of awe and joy is expansive and life-affirming. Maybe you, too, can increase your well-being by spending a little time this spring cultivating awe.

 

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