Want To Make Every Day Feel Like A National Park Vacation? Awe Can Help

Like all the experiences that evoke it, awe can be diverse and multifaceted. The emotion can be positive or negative, subtle or intense, but its key characteristic is that it makes us feel small and challenges our understanding of the world. When you see something so grand that it's beyond your comprehension, your jaw slacks, and you let out an expressive "wow!" you're deep in an awe experience.

Awe differs from other emotions not only in how it makes us feel but how it makes us act.

Thanks to the way that it roots us in the present moment, researchers have found that awe can actually alter our perception of time—and make us act as though we have more of it at our disposal. In turn, people tend to report a greater sense of patience, life satisfaction, and willingness to try new things after experiencing it. Due to the way awe shifts our perspective, it's also been found to enhance creative thinking1.

The growing body of research on awe helps explain why we tend to feel more inspired, relaxed, and at peace2 after a day spent outdoors. Nature, with its dynamic, sweeping views, is a playground for awe to run free.

Perhaps the most promising finding on awe, which I first learned about when researching my upcoming book on the health benefits of different landscapes in nature, is that it promotes prosocial behavior. By showing us how small we are in relation to the larger world, awe reminds us of our responsibility to the collective. In turn, it encourages us to make ethical decisions, act generously, and share with others.

Dacher Keltner, Ph.D.'s last exposure to intense awe wasn't on a cliff or in a sprawling forest. It was watching a Rolling Stones music video.

"I got massive chills, teared up, and was transfixed," the psychologist, awe researcher, and founding director of the University of California–Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, told mbg of his experience watching the first "Sympathy for the Devil" performance, which brought him back to his (very awe-inspiring) childhood in Laurel Canyon counterculture in the late '60s. "And that was only last night," he laughs.

Keltner's Wednesday night brush with awe proves that it's everywhere. It's sitting in towering trees, sure, but also waiting for us in our music libraries, museums, and performance spaces. As much as we find it in nature, we can find it in each other.

"Our biggest source of awe is other people," Keltner says, whether it's Mick Jagger strumming the guitar, an artist working on their masterpiece, or an everyday person who showed massive kindness.

Oftentimes, a healthy life is also a selfish one. We're encouraged to quiet our minds and block out any distractions that keep us from achieving inner peace. But Keltner makes an interesting point that research is finding—and this is something that Indigenous contemplatives have long known—that emotions like awe, the ones that bring us away from ourselves but closer to each other, are actually the most healing.

Researchers are now exploring ways that awe can be leveraged as a health intervention, as early studies have shown that the emotion may lower inflammatory markers4 due to the way it brightens mood. (Interestingly enough, awe may also be behind4 the life-changing, ego-crushing experiences people are having in ongoing psychedelic therapy research.)