Episode 242: The Power Of Awe
And hello to you, and welcome to the Richard Nicholls Podcast, the personal development podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate, and motivate you to be The best you can be. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nicholls and this episode is all about experiencing awe. And if you're ready, we'll start the show.
Hello folks, how are things with you? It's starting to get a bit cold around here now. Don't know what it's like for you, but I think I'm going to be putting the central heating on now, but then it is October, so I'd expect to. But up until last week, it still felt like summer, didn't it? Bright blue skies and everything, which is my favourite.
I'm happy for the changing of the seasons, but I do like a clear sky, even if it's cold, do you? I live quite close to a country park in the Midlands, and it's lovely. You can stand on this hill, you can see for miles around you, 20 or 30 miles, all these farms in the near and far distance, spot all these little villages and towns surrounded by trees.
You just see these little tiny tops of church spires poking up. It's awesome. Well worth braving the cold for, because you can come home and feel renewed. But why? Why can't I feel that renewed staring at a wall? Because my walls aren't awesome, that's why. And being in awe of something is really good for us.
But what do I mean by awe? What does something being awesome actually mean? What actually is awe inspiring? And what goes on in our brain? Well, this has been studied. Because this is what happens when psychologists begin to run out of ideas. And they don't want to replicate any studies. Even though they really should, actually.
But, never mind that now. So. Awe tends to be defined as the emotion we experience when we're encountering something with such perceived vastness that our brain might find it hard to comprehend how it can even exist. So it takes some cognitive understanding. It's why art exists, and why it's so varied, because depending on your existing view of the world, some things are meaningless, and some things will make you want to cry.
Yet to somebody else, the responses are the exact opposite. The meaning behind it is important. The European Cup was this year, wasn't it? And with football, there's some heel and toe footwork mastery that if it resulted in a goal after running rings around some defenders, it could make somebody so proud to be a football fan that the dopaminergic pathways of the brain light up like Christmas trees.
Yet somebody else could shrug so hard that they almost fall over. The football fan has enough understanding of it to know how much hard work that player is needed to put into perfecting their skills and, at the same time, can't imagine how somebody could do it. Like the tipping point of the Dunning Kruger effect.
Once you know enough about something, your place in it, how you fit into it, can change. And that creates an emotion based not on your sense of self, but the external world around you. It's the same with gymnastics in the Olympics last month, or dancers on Dancing on Ice, or singers or musicians. And it's the same for staring into the night sky at the thousands of stars.
Especially when you know that it's only the tiniest number, compared to how many stars that we can't see. It's even the same for things like the Harry Potter Studio Tour. It might just be a load of film props, but for some people, it's amazing, it's awe inspiring, because they know the little details that make it awe inspiring to them.
And that's the same for seats of power. The Palace of Westminster, the Reichstag in Berlin, or the White House. And it's not just because of any architecture. That'll do it, but what would create awe would be the rooms that's inside them.
I went to the House of Commons when I was about, I don't know, 18? 19? Something like that. I was doing some voiceover work for a local MP. And although I didn't really know much about politics, I was quite ignorant to it at the time, it was still pretty awesome to be there. Standing in the Commons Chamber, where all these debates happen, and it's not that big a room, it's quite small really, smaller than most cinema screen rooms.
But knowing the meaning behind it, and what goes on there, makes it feel very different, because it's vastness isn't about the physical space it takes up, it's vastness is about its power. It's the same for the Oval Office or the United Nations Office in Geneva. And the same applies for the vastness of something that can't be measured.
Something spiritual or religious, something like human ingenuity, or some qualities inside of somebody that just seem so huge that it's bigger than the space that they physically take up. How big was Rosa Parks? Was she five foot two? In which case, she was even tinier than me. Or was she so pivotal in the changes in America's attitude to racial segregation that she was actually far, far bigger and dwarfs me in comparison?
I love a study that was done jointly with three university psychology departments dotted around the world. One was in China, one was in the US, one was in Canada, and they did six studies between them where they asked people to simply draw a picture of themselves on a piece of paper that already had some grass and the sun drawn onto it.
They had to write the word me on it. And depending on where they were at the time, it influenced how small or how big they drew themselves. If they were a tourist at Yosemite National Park, they drew themselves a third smaller than if they were standing at a less awesome tourist place like a, you know, a waterfront harbour.
It's nice, but it's not as awesome as Yosemite. And there was even a correlation with the size of the word, Me, that they wrote. It seems that awe makes us feel small and less significant, but not in a self deprecating way. More in a humble way. Shrinks down our ego a little bit by creating what's sometimes called the small self and similar studies have been done to look into the effects of this and what it also shows is that becoming the small self encourages pro social tendencies.
It encourages kindness, generosity, as if awe is a collective emotion which requires a diminishing of our sense of self, but with a greater sense of togetherness, belonging. I like the study that Daniel Stancato and Dacher Keltner from University of California did, where they did some measures of generosity.
Things like giving participants, in a study some raffle tickets for them to either keep or share amongst other people in the study not realising that the study that they thought they were involved in didn't really exist. It was just to measure how many raffle tickets they'd share out and other things as well.
An often used way of measuring generosity is to have the experimenter drop things and they see how much help the participants give in picking things back up again. Or there's a questionnaire at the end of whatever fake thing that they thought they were doing that had a question in it about how much they thought that they should be paid for taking part in the study.
And it's between two small ish amounts. And we know that some things can influence how far up or down that scale they ask for. Being primed to think about money makes us less generous. That makes sense. But being in a room with plants in it makes us more generous. And experiencing awe does as well.
People who have recently felt in awe of something felt less entitled to money for taking part in the questionnaire, afterwards. They were more likely to ask for one dollar rather than ten. One of the other things they did at Berkeley in California because of their particular trees was quite interesting.
At Berkeley they've got these massive Tasmanian eucalyptus trees, you see. 8, 000 miles away from home, they were planted as a windbreak for a running track back in the late 1800s, apparently. But, because there's no koala bears in California, these trees look far healthier than they do natively back in Tasmania. So, half of the participants were asked to meet at the trees, and half just outside a building. A building that was the same height as the trees, and they were simply asked to stand there for a minute. And look up. That's it. And those that looked up at the trees, they then offered more help to an experimenter than the participants who gazed up at a building.
And they behaved more ethically, with eight questions about scenarios involving morals, keeping the extra change in a coffee shop if you've been paid with it. If you paid with a 20 when they thought it was a 10. Things like that. Whether you should keep the change and so on. Looking up at trees makes you more likely to go back to the shop and give them their money back.
It reduces people's feelings of entitlement as it brings about that small self version of them. Linked to humility and a sense of belonging, you see. So experiencing awe can give you a place in the world, and a shared place as well. Something that makes you feel, not only that life is worth living, but that you're not alone.
Even if you are. Because bigger things connect you. I'll be interested to see if anybody does any further studies into gratitude and awe. Watch this space. There have been quite a few studies already, like I say, but it's still in its infancy really, this work. We've been studying the influence of money on happiness for decades.
So we know more about that and the same for gratitude and therapy and journaling and medication. Those studies have been going on forever. But specifically feeling awed by something? That's quite new. 2005, I think, the studies started, so there's gonna be a lot more that's gonna be done. But to sum up those studies that have been done so far, we find the following.
Awe, that feeling we get in the presence of something huge that challenges our understanding of the world. Improves your mood. It increases life satisfaction. It reduces inflammation in the body to improve a whole host of chronic physical problems. Awe helps you to think more critically. It sharpens your mind.
It decreases materialism. It makes you more generous. It even makes you feel as if you've got more time on your hands. So it's worth adding things into your life that you would think of as awesome. So to some people, it might be a slow mo guy's video of the way that coloured drops of water fall into milk. To others, it's a nature documentary, or drawings of tardigrades.
If you're so inclined, write about the things. that you find awe inspiring. Writing things down is a great way of capturing an experience in your mind so as to almost re experience it. Some folk can simply daydream and relive stuff but most people need to either talk about it or write about it in order to wake up the experience and writing about it in private works best for most because it's it's on your own terms and in your own time. With no pressure from anybody to be interesting or articulate, you just write about the experience.
Write about getting married, falling in love, having a baby. These things can be awesome. But, so can watching somebody on a TED Talk if the subject is about something you're interested in. Or, that clip from Educating Yorkshire with Mushy, the kid with a stammer that learns how to control it by listening to music.
You can write about these things. And write about the meaning that's behind them. Your thoughts, your feelings about it. And as long as you avoid the classic YouTube rabbit hole that can prevent productivity, you can feel awe just from watching a video of the Philharmonic Orchestra playing the Star Wars theme.
Or one that gets me is the BBC Live version of One Day Like This by Elbow at the Abbey Road Studios, especially when the choir kicks in. So it's not always about pyramids and panoramas. I mean, it can be. If that's awe inspiring for you then spend more time watching the National Geographic channel or whatever.
Do the things that you find awesome rather than Channel 5. But it might be David Bowie documentaries or medieval art. Whatever it is, find what's awesome to you. Spend time thinking about it. Absorbing it. It'll do you good. I'll add some links into the show notes with a few things that I've said on here to get you going.
And feel free to contribute to my social media clips if you have some awe inspiring content to share with other people. That'd be lovely. If you like the podcast, of course, please tell somebody about it. Don't be shy. The more people that learn about this stuff, the better. So, let's go disco for another week.
As always, I'll be back on Friday with a bonus short episode. And of course, I'll be on Patreon with a proper full episode every single Monday, if you want a little bit extra from me. Have an awesome day, and I'll speak to you again next time. Take care.
Hello folks, how are things with you? It's starting to get a bit cold around here now. Don't know what it's like for you, but I think I'm going to be putting the central heating on now, but then it is October, so I'd expect to. But up until last week, it still felt like summer, didn't it? Bright blue skies and everything, which is my favourite.
I'm happy for the changing of the seasons, but I do like a clear sky, even if it's cold, do you? I live quite close to a country park in the Midlands, and it's lovely. You can stand on this hill, you can see for miles around you, 20 or 30 miles, all these farms in the near and far distance, spot all these little villages and towns surrounded by trees.
You just see these little tiny tops of church spires poking up. It's awesome. Well worth braving the cold for, because you can come home and feel renewed. But why? Why can't I feel that renewed staring at a wall? Because my walls aren't awesome, that's why. And being in awe of something is really good for us.
But what do I mean by awe? What does something being awesome actually mean? What actually is awe inspiring? And what goes on in our brain? Well, this has been studied. Because this is what happens when psychologists begin to run out of ideas. And they don't want to replicate any studies. Even though they really should, actually.
But, never mind that now. So. Awe tends to be defined as the emotion we experience when we're encountering something with such perceived vastness that our brain might find it hard to comprehend how it can even exist. So it takes some cognitive understanding. It's why art exists, and why it's so varied, because depending on your existing view of the world, some things are meaningless, and some things will make you want to cry.
Yet to somebody else, the responses are the exact opposite. The meaning behind it is important. The European Cup was this year, wasn't it? And with football, there's some heel and toe footwork mastery that if it resulted in a goal after running rings around some defenders, it could make somebody so proud to be a football fan that the dopaminergic pathways of the brain light up like Christmas trees.
Yet somebody else could shrug so hard that they almost fall over. The football fan has enough understanding of it to know how much hard work that player is needed to put into perfecting their skills and, at the same time, can't imagine how somebody could do it. Like the tipping point of the Dunning Kruger effect.
Once you know enough about something, your place in it, how you fit into it, can change. And that creates an emotion based not on your sense of self, but the external world around you. It's the same with gymnastics in the Olympics last month, or dancers on Dancing on Ice, or singers or musicians. And it's the same for staring into the night sky at the thousands of stars.
Especially when you know that it's only the tiniest number, compared to how many stars that we can't see. It's even the same for things like the Harry Potter Studio Tour. It might just be a load of film props, but for some people, it's amazing, it's awe inspiring, because they know the little details that make it awe inspiring to them.
And that's the same for seats of power. The Palace of Westminster, the Reichstag in Berlin, or the White House. And it's not just because of any architecture. That'll do it, but what would create awe would be the rooms that's inside them.
I went to the House of Commons when I was about, I don't know, 18? 19? Something like that. I was doing some voiceover work for a local MP. And although I didn't really know much about politics, I was quite ignorant to it at the time, it was still pretty awesome to be there. Standing in the Commons Chamber, where all these debates happen, and it's not that big a room, it's quite small really, smaller than most cinema screen rooms.
But knowing the meaning behind it, and what goes on there, makes it feel very different, because it's vastness isn't about the physical space it takes up, it's vastness is about its power. It's the same for the Oval Office or the United Nations Office in Geneva. And the same applies for the vastness of something that can't be measured.
Something spiritual or religious, something like human ingenuity, or some qualities inside of somebody that just seem so huge that it's bigger than the space that they physically take up. How big was Rosa Parks? Was she five foot two? In which case, she was even tinier than me. Or was she so pivotal in the changes in America's attitude to racial segregation that she was actually far, far bigger and dwarfs me in comparison?
I love a study that was done jointly with three university psychology departments dotted around the world. One was in China, one was in the US, one was in Canada, and they did six studies between them where they asked people to simply draw a picture of themselves on a piece of paper that already had some grass and the sun drawn onto it.
They had to write the word me on it. And depending on where they were at the time, it influenced how small or how big they drew themselves. If they were a tourist at Yosemite National Park, they drew themselves a third smaller than if they were standing at a less awesome tourist place like a, you know, a waterfront harbour.
It's nice, but it's not as awesome as Yosemite. And there was even a correlation with the size of the word, Me, that they wrote. It seems that awe makes us feel small and less significant, but not in a self deprecating way. More in a humble way. Shrinks down our ego a little bit by creating what's sometimes called the small self and similar studies have been done to look into the effects of this and what it also shows is that becoming the small self encourages pro social tendencies.
It encourages kindness, generosity, as if awe is a collective emotion which requires a diminishing of our sense of self, but with a greater sense of togetherness, belonging. I like the study that Daniel Stancato and Dacher Keltner from University of California did, where they did some measures of generosity.
Things like giving participants, in a study some raffle tickets for them to either keep or share amongst other people in the study not realising that the study that they thought they were involved in didn't really exist. It was just to measure how many raffle tickets they'd share out and other things as well.
An often used way of measuring generosity is to have the experimenter drop things and they see how much help the participants give in picking things back up again. Or there's a questionnaire at the end of whatever fake thing that they thought they were doing that had a question in it about how much they thought that they should be paid for taking part in the study.
And it's between two small ish amounts. And we know that some things can influence how far up or down that scale they ask for. Being primed to think about money makes us less generous. That makes sense. But being in a room with plants in it makes us more generous. And experiencing awe does as well.
People who have recently felt in awe of something felt less entitled to money for taking part in the questionnaire, afterwards. They were more likely to ask for one dollar rather than ten. One of the other things they did at Berkeley in California because of their particular trees was quite interesting.
At Berkeley they've got these massive Tasmanian eucalyptus trees, you see. 8, 000 miles away from home, they were planted as a windbreak for a running track back in the late 1800s, apparently. But, because there's no koala bears in California, these trees look far healthier than they do natively back in Tasmania. So, half of the participants were asked to meet at the trees, and half just outside a building. A building that was the same height as the trees, and they were simply asked to stand there for a minute. And look up. That's it. And those that looked up at the trees, they then offered more help to an experimenter than the participants who gazed up at a building.
And they behaved more ethically, with eight questions about scenarios involving morals, keeping the extra change in a coffee shop if you've been paid with it. If you paid with a 20 when they thought it was a 10. Things like that. Whether you should keep the change and so on. Looking up at trees makes you more likely to go back to the shop and give them their money back.
It reduces people's feelings of entitlement as it brings about that small self version of them. Linked to humility and a sense of belonging, you see. So experiencing awe can give you a place in the world, and a shared place as well. Something that makes you feel, not only that life is worth living, but that you're not alone.
Even if you are. Because bigger things connect you. I'll be interested to see if anybody does any further studies into gratitude and awe. Watch this space. There have been quite a few studies already, like I say, but it's still in its infancy really, this work. We've been studying the influence of money on happiness for decades.
So we know more about that and the same for gratitude and therapy and journaling and medication. Those studies have been going on forever. But specifically feeling awed by something? That's quite new. 2005, I think, the studies started, so there's gonna be a lot more that's gonna be done. But to sum up those studies that have been done so far, we find the following.
Awe, that feeling we get in the presence of something huge that challenges our understanding of the world. Improves your mood. It increases life satisfaction. It reduces inflammation in the body to improve a whole host of chronic physical problems. Awe helps you to think more critically. It sharpens your mind.
It decreases materialism. It makes you more generous. It even makes you feel as if you've got more time on your hands. So it's worth adding things into your life that you would think of as awesome. So to some people, it might be a slow mo guy's video of the way that coloured drops of water fall into milk. To others, it's a nature documentary, or drawings of tardigrades.
If you're so inclined, write about the things. that you find awe inspiring. Writing things down is a great way of capturing an experience in your mind so as to almost re experience it. Some folk can simply daydream and relive stuff but most people need to either talk about it or write about it in order to wake up the experience and writing about it in private works best for most because it's it's on your own terms and in your own time. With no pressure from anybody to be interesting or articulate, you just write about the experience.
Write about getting married, falling in love, having a baby. These things can be awesome. But, so can watching somebody on a TED Talk if the subject is about something you're interested in. Or, that clip from Educating Yorkshire with Mushy, the kid with a stammer that learns how to control it by listening to music.
You can write about these things. And write about the meaning that's behind them. Your thoughts, your feelings about it. And as long as you avoid the classic YouTube rabbit hole that can prevent productivity, you can feel awe just from watching a video of the Philharmonic Orchestra playing the Star Wars theme.
Or one that gets me is the BBC Live version of One Day Like This by Elbow at the Abbey Road Studios, especially when the choir kicks in. So it's not always about pyramids and panoramas. I mean, it can be. If that's awe inspiring for you then spend more time watching the National Geographic channel or whatever.
Do the things that you find awesome rather than Channel 5. But it might be David Bowie documentaries or medieval art. Whatever it is, find what's awesome to you. Spend time thinking about it. Absorbing it. It'll do you good. I'll add some links into the show notes with a few things that I've said on here to get you going.
And feel free to contribute to my social media clips if you have some awe inspiring content to share with other people. That'd be lovely. If you like the podcast, of course, please tell somebody about it. Don't be shy. The more people that learn about this stuff, the better. So, let's go disco for another week.
As always, I'll be back on Friday with a bonus short episode. And of course, I'll be on Patreon with a proper full episode every single Monday, if you want a little bit extra from me. Have an awesome day, and I'll speak to you again next time. Take care.