The New Science of Awe & How It Improves Your Physical & Mental Wellbeing with Dr Dacher Keltner #340
Dr. Dacher Keltner, a Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley, discusses how awe, defined as our response to vast mysteries, is an emotion accessible in everyday life. He explains its eight types and profound benefits, from reducing inflammation to fostering humility and meaning, transforming health and well-being.
Deep Dive Analysis
15 Topic Outline
Rethinking Happiness: From Individual Pleasure to Meaning
The Limited Role of Money in Happiness and Life Expectancy
Defining Awe: Vastness, Mystery, and Emotion
The Eight Paths to Awe (The Eight Wonders)
Health Benefits of Awe Experiences
Music as a Pathway to Awe and Cultural Identity
Collective Effervescence: Shared Movement and Consciousness
Impact of Technology on Experiencing Awe
Awe Walks: A Simple Practice for Everyday Wonder
Awe's Role in Humility and Altruism
Awe in Life and Death: Birth, Loss, and Transformation
Wabi-Sabi: Embracing the Cycle of Creation, Decay, and Rebirth
Awe and Spirituality: A New Lens for Understanding
Cultivating Awe as a Trainable Skill
Final Advice: Finding Awe for Health and Well-being
6 Key Concepts
Happiness (2023 Perspective)
In 2023, happiness is increasingly understood as a quest for meaning, moving beyond individual pleasure and economic expansion. This shift is influenced by global challenges and a collective search for deeper purpose in life.
Awe
Awe is an emotion felt in response to powerful things that are vast, obscure, and mysterious, transcending one's current frame of reference. It makes one feel small yet fills them with wonder, often leading to generosity and curiosity.
The Eight Wonders (Paths to Awe)
These are eight common and easily accessible ways humans experience awe, identified through global studies. They include moral beauty (kindness/courage), nature, collective movement, music, visual design, spirituality, epiphanies (big ideas), and the profound experiences of life and death.
Collective Effervescence
This term describes the feeling of unity and shared consciousness that arises when people move in unison or synchronize their movements, such as at concerts or sports events. It often results in an electric, ecstatic sensation of being united with others.
Humility
Humility is characterized by a realistic self-assessment and an openness to appreciating the strengths of other people. Experiencing awe can foster humility by making individuals feel smaller in the presence of something vast, reducing self-focus.
Wabi-Sabi
A Japanese principle that recognizes the natural cycle of creation, birth, growth, decay, and death in all forms, from natural phenomena to man-made objects. It encourages embracing this transient and imperfect process rather than resisting it.
8 Questions Answered
Happiness is increasingly viewed as a quest for meaning, moving beyond individual pleasure and economic expansion, especially given current global challenges and a collective search for deeper purpose.
Money matters significantly for those in poverty, boosting life expectancy and well-being. However, for many others, its contribution to happiness is not as great as perceived, and an excessive focus on materialism can undermine happiness.
Awe experiences can calm inflammation, activate the vagus nerve, deactivate the brain's stress center (amygdala), reduce the perception of physical pain (especially for older adults), and foster clearer, more creative thinking.
Awe is all around us and can be found in eight common paths, including moral beauty, nature, music, collective movement, visual design, spirituality, epiphanies, and life and death, making it accessible in daily life.
New technologies, particularly smartphones, can interfere with collective effervescence by distracting individuals and preventing shared focus, as seen when people film events instead of being fully present in the communal experience.
Yes, studies show that even brief experiences of awe, such as looking at vast trees, can make individuals feel less narcissistic, less entitled, and more likely to help a stranger.
Death is a profound mystery that prompts existential questions about life's meaning and our place in the broader human experience, leading to a sense of awe, even amidst suffering and grief.
Yes, awe can be cultivated through practices like awe walks, listening to music with intention, reflecting on moral beauty, or engaging in contemplative practices, which can open one up to noticing everyday wonder.
20 Actionable Insights
1. Cultivate Happiness for Longevity
Cultivating happiness through various practices can add approximately seven to eight years to your life expectancy, as supported by over 200 studies. This is comparable to the impact of avoiding smoking, excessive drinking, and red meat consumption.
2. Prioritize Social Connections
Being deeply embedded in a culture or community you feel part of, and fostering strong social connections, can increase your life expectancy by up to 10 years. This highlights the profound physical benefits of belonging and interaction.
3. Seek Awe to Reduce Stress
Actively seeking out experiences of awe can activate the vagus nerve, calm inflammation, benefit your heart, and deactivate stress regions in the brain like the amygdala. Even five minutes of awe can provide a suite of these health benefits.
4. Reframe Happiness as Meaning
Shift your understanding of happiness from individual pleasure and economic expansion to a quest for meaning and purpose in life. This broader perspective helps navigate modern challenges and find deeper fulfillment.
5. Practice Contemplation for Awe
Engage in regular contemplative practices such as meditation or breath work to open yourself up to easily noticing and benefiting from everyday awe. This training helps you perceive wonder in the mundane.
6. Integrate Short Awe Experiences
Make small, three to five-minute shifts in your daily routine to find awe, such as sitting in a garden, sharing awe stories with colleagues, or observing small and vast things in your environment. These brief moments can provide significant benefits.
7. Take Weekly “Awe Walks”
Dedicate time once a week to go for an “awe walk” in a somewhat mysterious place, intentionally looking at both small details (like a rock) and vast elements (like the sky or a landscape). This practice can reduce distress and make you feel less self-focused.
8. Observe Nature Briefly
Take one minute to look at a sunset or 45 seconds to study the movements of a cloud. These brief observations of nature can easily induce awe and provide mental benefits.
9. Stare at a Tree for Awe
Simply getting outside and staring at a tree for a few minutes can induce awe. This practice helps you connect with something larger than yourself and can lead to feelings of humility and altruism.
10. Reflect on Nature’s Vastness
When observing nature, such as a tree, reflect on its age, history, and connection to past generations. This contemplation of temporal and physical vastness can be a profound source of awe, connecting you to a larger web of life.
11. Engage in Collective Movement
Participate in activities that involve moving in unison or synchronizing movements with others, such as rituals, clapping at a game, dancing, or singing in a choir. This “collective effervescence” fosters shared consciousness and feelings of unity.
12. Prioritize In-Person Group Activities
To combat loneliness and excessive self-focus, choose in-person group activities over solitary online ones, even for hobbies like yoga. Attending classes allows you to meet like-minded people and experience collective awe.
13. Listen to Music for Awe
Actively listen to music that gives you rushes of goosebumps or makes you tear up, as this is a direct pathway to experiencing awe. Dedicate 10 minutes daily to music that sustains you and evokes strong emotions.
14. Revisit Awe-Inducing Music
Re-listen to albums or songs from your past that evoked powerful emotions, as this can reconnect you to earlier awe experiences and provide current benefits. This can be a simple way to access awe.
15. Reflect on Moral Beauty
Think about a mentor or someone whose kindness or courage profoundly changed your life and how their influence remains with you today. This reflection on moral beauty is a powerful source of awe.
16. Practice Reflecting on Life Cycles
Regularly imagine the full life trajectory of someone you deeply care about, from their birth to their death. This practice, common in some cultures, can help you appreciate the cycle of life and find awe in its entirety.
17. Adopt Practices for Facing Death
When confronting the death of a loved one, adopt three practices: accept uncertainty and not knowing, simply witness the process without trying to control it, and act with compassion. This approach can open you to awe amidst grief.
18. Watch Awe-Inspiring Videos
Utilize technology by watching awe videos, such as nature documentaries or clips of human achievements, for quick and accessible experiences of awe. This can be a simple way to find wonder.
19. Re-evaluate Money’s Role
Recognize that while money matters significantly for those in poverty, for many others, its contribution to happiness is not as great as commonly perceived. Focus instead on social connections and meaning for greater well-being.
20. Practice Gratitude and Giving
Cultivate happiness by regularly practicing gratitude, getting outdoors for walks, and engaging in acts of giving or charity. These actions contribute positively to your overall well-being and life expectancy.
7 Key Quotes
A lot of the health challenges come out of this internal individual focus that has just blown up today. And awe moves us outside of ourselves.
Dr. Dacher Keltner
Finding some sense of what is beyond transactional values and money and the like matters for your life expectancy.
Dr. Dacher Keltner
Awe occurs in a realm separate from the mundane world of materialism, money, acquisition, and status signaling. A realm beyond the profane that many call the sacred.
Dr. Dacher Keltner
I think we should embrace that [mystery of awe].
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
Awe seems to be the perfect antidote to everything we're struggling with today, which a lot of it is simply inward focus. Me, me, me.
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
The people we love remain with us in even more mysterious ways after they leave.
Dr. Dacher Keltner
Religion is a master. It's a technology of awe.
Dr. Dacher Keltner
2 Protocols
Roshi Joan Halifax's Three Principles for Facing End of Life
Dr. Dacher Keltner (attributing Roshi Joan Halifax)- Accept uncertainty, mystery, and not knowing about the dying process.
- Witness the process without trying to control, direct, or label what is happening.
- Engage in compassionate action, offering kindness rather than attempting to control or mislead.
Awe Walk Practice
Dr. Dacher Keltner- Go to a place that is a little mysterious.
- Look at small things (e.g., a rock) and vast things (e.g., the whole environment/sky).