“The evolution of our species built into our brains and bodies an emotion, our species-defining passion, that enables us to wonder together about the great questions of living.”
That’s just one of many illuminating conclusions that researcher Dr. Dacher Keltner discovered in his scientific studies of awe. In this conversation, you’ll learn about the eight wonders of life, how to experience more everyday awe (and take yourself on awe walks), and what’s behind our current crisis of meaning.
As Dacher writes, “Our experiences of awe hint at faint answers to these perennial questions and move us to wander toward the mysteries and wonders of life.”
More About Dacher: Dr. Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and the faculty director of the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center. A renowned expert in the biological and evolutionary origins of human emotion, Dr. Keltner studies the science of compassion, awe, love, and beauty, and how emotions shape our moral intuition. His research interests also span issues of power, status, inequality, and social class.
He is the author of the best-selling book Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life and of The Compassionate Instinct, and today we are talking about his most recent book, AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. Dacher is also the host of the award-winning podcast, The Science of Happiness.
🌟 3 Key Takeaways
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8 wonders of life: moral beauty (the strength, courage, overcoming, and kindness of others); collective effervescence; nature; music; visual design; mysticism (spiritual and religious); stories of life and death; and epiphanies.
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Everyday awe: In our daily lives, we most frequently feel awe in encounters with moral beauty, and secondarily in nature and in experiences with music, art, and film.
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The big idea of awe: We are part of systems larger than the self. “Awe is about knowing, sensing, seeing and understanding fundamental truths, and leads to epiphanies across the eight wonders of life—transforming how we see the essential nature of the world.”
✅ Try This Next—Go on an Awe Walk:
- Tap into your childlike sense of wonder. Try to approach what you see with fresh eyes, imagining that you're seeing it for the first time. Take a moment in each walk to take in the vastness of things, for example in looking at a panoramic view or up close at the detail of a leaf or flower.
- Go somewhere new. Each week, try to choose a new location. You're more likely to feel awe in a novel environment where the sights and sounds are unexpected and unfamiliar to you. That said, some places never seem to get old, so there's nothing wrong with revisiting your favorite spots if you find that they consistently fill you with awe. The key is to recognize new features of the same old place.
- What’s mysterious around me? What’s the deeper story of what I’m perceiving?
🔗 Resources Mentioned
📚 Books Mentioned
🎧 Related Episodes
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Pivot with Jenny Blake 