THE WONDER OF AWE
awe can make you happier, healthier, more humble and more connected to the people around you.
Scientists have been studying the complex and mysterious emotion called awe. Awe can give you goosebumps and jaw dropping experiences. Research suggests that experiencing awe may lead to a wide range of benefits, from happiness and health to perhaps more unexpected benefits such as generosity, humility, and critical thinking. Awe may improve your mood and make you more satisfied with your life.
AWE MAY DECREASE MATERIALISM
Experiencing awe may dampen feelings of materialism, people who experience more awe in their lives, placed less value on money and possessions than having an experience due to inspirational impact it can have. Also that awe can function as a buffer against negative emotions when you lose material possessions. After time spent marvelling at the world around you, misplacing your new sunglasses might not feel so bad.
AWE MAKES YOU FEEL SMALLER AND MORE HUMBLE
One of the most profound effects of awe is how it can change our perception of ourselves relative to the larger world. Besides making people feel physically smaller, awe may also make people more humble plus led them to acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses in a more balanced way and to better recognise how outside forces contributed to their successes.
Lorenzo Spoleti
AWE CAN MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE MORE TIME
Awe may also expand our perception of time. People induced to feel awe felt less impatient and agreed more strongly with statements suggesting that time is plentiful and expansive than people induced to feel happiness. The researchers speculate that by immersing us in the moment, awe may allow us to be present in the here and now. With more time on their hands, people feeling awe reported a greater willingness to offer that time to others—to volunteer their time to help a charity.
AWE CAN MAKE YOU MORE GENEROUS AND COOPERATIVE
Experiencing awe may make people more kind and generous, that people with a greater tendency for awe were more generous perhaps because of the way it encourages us to focus less on ourselves and expands our perception of available time.
AWE CAN MAKE YOU FEEL MORE CONNECTED TO OTHER PEOPLE AND HUMANITY
Awe has an amazing capacity to bring people together. Research suggests that awe helps us feel more connected to the people in our lives and to humanity as a whole.
Bryan Goff
TAKE TIME TO EXPERIENCE AWE IN YOUR LIFE
You don’t need to take a flight in space or even take a white water rafting trip to experience awe. You can experience awe at varying intensities and in your own ways:
Listening to a moving piece of music, engaging with nature, bingeing on breathtaking YouTube videos.
Seeing a giant skyscraper, reading a story about a local hero.
Make time for spirituality or religion, be inspired by other people’s actions.
Of course, it’s tough to beat real-world experiences, research found that the more awe the participants experienced, the more improvement they saw in their well-being and symptoms of stress one week later. Plus it was also reported that greater life satisfaction and well-being on days that were spent in nature, resulted in a higher level of awe. This suggests that awe just might be a crucial ingredient in nature’s restorative powers. There’s no perfect formula to experience awe (because it’s different for everyone), but there are some things you can do to help you run into it more often.
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GO OUT IN NATURE
Research shows that people consistently rank nature as one of the top ways that they experience awe, try getting to a place where you can get a vast view of your environment such as climbing a mountain or even getting to a the top floor a high building. Or just take a walk in whatever nature is around you and try looking for something you’ve never seen before.
GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE
Novelty is a big part of awe. Visit somewhere in your town or city you’ve never been. Try something new. Read about someone you don’t know much about or a biography of someone who inspires you.
LOOK UP
Take in the sites and sounds around you. Look up from your phone and other distractions.
HAVE AN OPEN MIND
Part of the experience of awe is that feeling of smallness that cause you to re-scale yourself — or see yourself in a different light. Engage with the world with a more open mind, see possibilities, ask questions and look for the impossible.
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