The New Science of Awe & How It Improves Your Physical & Mental Wellbeing with Dr Dacher Keltner #340

When was the last time you felt awe? Perhaps it’s an emotion you notice often, evoked by the trees, clouds, or people around you. Or maybe it’s something you associate with more dramatic, less frequent experiences. Dr Dacher Keltner, has written a sublime book on the subject of awe. It’s called Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life and in it he proposes that awe is an emotion that’s all around us, waiting to be discovered – and in doing so, we can transform our health and lives for the better. Dacher is one of the world’s foremost emotion scientists and Professor of Psychology at the University of California. He’s also Director of the Greater Good Science Center, which studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of happiness and wellbeing. He has spent decades studying the science of happiness and believes that across the world, we are collectively having a moment of reflection and looking for more meaning. In this conversation, Dacher defines awe as our response to powerful things that are obscure, vast, and mysterious. They’re beyond our frame of reference, making us feel small and filling us with wonder. But you don’t have to go to the Grand Canyon or see the Northern Lights to find them. Having studied people’s understanding and experience of awe in 26 different countries, he’s found eight types that are common and easily available to us all. They include nature, music, moral beauty (noticing others’ kindness), birth and death, and my favourite ‘collective effervescence’. This is that feeling of coming together with others, moving as one, and sharing the same consciousness – you may have experienced it in a sports stadium, at a music concert, on a dancefloor, in worship, in a choir, or even at parkrun. We spoke in depth about how birth and death are strong triggers for awe, sharing our own painful yet precious experiences of watching close relatives die. We also considered how awe reduces the ego and makes you humble. And how having a regular practice of contemplation, like meditation or breathwork, can open us up to easily noticing and benefitting from everyday awe. I truly believe that Dacher’s work can help all of us find greater meaning and greater health. He’s done a fantastic job of finding the science to support his words, but I think we also know intuitively that what he says makes perfect sense. This was a wonderful and deeply profound conversation that contains science, storytelling, raw emotion and so much more. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Thanks to our

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.

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.