What is awe? The clip below describes the positive emotion of awe and ways to find it. Research has found that there are multiple benefits of experiencing this positive emotion.
Methods to put yourself in awe include large scale events (traveling to national parks), but also include everyday events (looking up at very large trees, watching the sunset, watching certain videos, etc).
There is also a great book on awe to check out, with both research info and personal experiences. Enjoy!
Hey all, Dr. Matt B here. These are your Emotional Minutes. I recently took a trip to Glacier National Park. The whole time I was in Northwestern Montana, I kept having moments where I felt this sense of deep awe at what I was seeing. Especially as I looked out at the glacier cut peaks in the park.
Defining Awe
So what is awe? It is a positive emotion. It tends to occur in the presence of something that transcends our understanding of the human experience. This is often a sublime form of positive or lower-level surprise. Sometimes we don’t necessarily understand what we’re experiencing, but we’re flushed with this feeling.
If you’re interested in emotions in general, check out our clip on why humans experience and express emotions (positive or negative emotions).
Benefits
Awe is something that’s been increasingly studied lately, especially at the University of California, Berkeley. Scientists are starting to suspect that humans have been evolutionarily programmed to experience this positive emotion.
A lot of that research has found that this emotion has a lot of benefits. It can boost or enhance our mood and it can open up our mindset to wonder and curiosity. Thus opening us to new experience and possibilities. Preliminary findings that this emotion may enhance our body’s healing ability, even in terms of cellular growth and regeneration.
How to Experience It
A lot of times, people experience awe in grand natural places like Glacier National Park, the Grand Canyon, or Yosemite. But you can experience this emotion closer to home by getting out and looking for it in your daily life.
You can look up at large trees. Or go to areas where there’s a not lot of light and stare up at the night sky. You might feel it by seeing children interact with their environment or with animals. Looking at pieces of art or viewing great feats of human experience can also give a sense of awe. Even observing great acts of virtue, giving and sacrifice, whether live or in videos, can induce this good feeling. These are just a couple ways to find it in your everyday life.
Sometimes, people might seek out these experiences or try to “make” themselves experience awe. Instead, it is really about putting yourself in those situations where you may experience it, viewing those things, and just letting your emotions naturally come from those experience. There is not a need to try to feel it, it tends to come on its own in those settings.
Go get it! -Dr. Matt B
