Take an example from a study Dr. Stellar conducted, in which she and a team of researchers asked participants how often awe showed up in their daily lives. She was curious about the folks who reported feeling a lot of it: “What are these people doing? How can they possibly be experiencing this much awe?” she recalls. When they asked these folks to get more granular, she was delighted by one answer in particular: “This woman wrote about pouring cream into her coffee and watching it swirl, making this beautiful pattern as it mixed in. And I was like, ‘Man, I just pour cream into my coffee and gulp it down.’”
It’s not that different from the idea of romanticizing your life. And you don’t even need to change your routine to relish what Dr. Thompson calls “micro awes.” If you go for a walk every day, for example, give yourself a goal of observing three things on your route that you hadn’t paid much attention to before—say, the architectural details of a building on your block, the moss creeping over the iron gate of your local cemetery, or a willow’s branches gently swaying over the pond in your neighborhood park. “All these little moments of awe build up to a greater sense of well-being,” he says. “Be open to those moments. They are there if you allow them to be.”
Get into your feelings with someone.
Again, awe helps us feel a little less isolated, a little more part of something. You can go out of your way to encounter it with another person, sure, but you can also just talk about it. Let this example from my conversation with Dr. Thompson inspire you: Before he was a scientist, he spent 20 years working as a detective in New York City: “My head’s not stuck in the clouds. I’ve seen the reality of the world,” he says. “Awe reminds me that the good is out there every day. Even while sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, seeing the sunrise in my rearview mirror would put me a little bit more at ease.”
I felt comfortable enough to share a similar memory with him: “I remember being in the car with my mom when I was younger. She looked at the sunset, smiled, and held out her hand as if she was going to scoop something up and said: ‘The sun looks like an egg yolk, like I could just hold it in my hand.’ She doesn’t share her emotions a lot, so in that moment, she was so human to me. And it was really special.”
There we were, two people who had met just 15 minutes prior, swapping stories about the sun from the most intimate corners of our minds—which checks out, according to Dr. Thompson: “Awe makes a good memory that much more vivid.” Once you start opening up about the snippets that have stuck with you, it becomes contagious. “Awe starts with you but don’t let it end with you,” he says. “Share it with other people.”
Give awe its own space in your wellness routine.
To foster more of this magic in your life, you need to be intentional about it just like any other habit that’s good for you: In the same way that you might carve out time to exercise, cook a nutritious meal, or get enough sleep, adding “feel a little amazed by something” to your to-do list might transform the way you think about self-care.
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