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Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life
Dacher Keltner
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Wonder, the mental state of openness, questioning, curiosity, and embracing mystery, arises out of experiences of awe. In our studies, people who find more everyday awe show evidence of living with wonder. They are more open to new ideas. To what is unknown. To what language can’t describe. To the absurd. To seeking new knowledge. To experience itself, for example of sound, or color, or bodily sensation, or the directions thought might take during dreams or meditation. To the strengths and virtues of other people. It should not surprise that people who feel even five minutes a day of everyday awe are more curious about art, music, poetry, new scientific discoveries, philosophy, and questions about life and death. They feel more comfortable with mysteries, with that which cannot be explained.”
“Tap into your childlike sense of wonder. Young children are in an almost constant state of awe since everything is so new to them. During your walk, 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.”
“We can find awe, then, in eight wonders of life: moral beauty, collective effervescence, nature, music, visual design, spirituality and religion, life and death, and epiphany.”
“Tears, then, arise when we perceive vast things that unite us into community.”
“Sometimes the most important finding in a scientific study is a simple observation, free of any hypothesis or pitting of theoretical perspectives against one another. And this was true in our daily diary research: people experience awe two to three times a week. That’s once every couple of days. They did so in finding the extraordinary in the ordinary: a friend’s generosity to a homeless person in the streets; the scent of a flower; looking at a leafy tree’s play of light and shadow on a sidewalk; hearing a song that transported them back to a first love; bingeing Game of Thrones with friends. Everyday awe.”
“Simply being in a context of awe leads to a “small self.” We can quiet that nagging voice of the interfering neurotic simply by locating ourselves in contexts of more awe.”
“Fun, like awe, is one of several self-transcendent states, a space of emotions that transport us out of our self-focused, threat-oriented, and status quo mindset to a realm where we connect to something larger than the self. Joy, the feeling of being free, for the moment, of worldly concerns, is part of this space, as is ecstasy (or bliss), when we sense ourself to dissolve completely (in awe we remain aware, although faintly, of our selves). And fun, the mirth and lighthearted delight we feel when imagining alternative perspectives upon our mundane lives we so often take too seriously.”
“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.”
“what we learned from our twenty-six-culture study: 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. Rarer were everyday awe experiences of the spiritual variety (although had we done the study at a religious college, this no doubt would have been different). We also confirmed, as in our mapping studies, that most moments of awe—about three-quarters—feel good, and only one-quarter are flavored with threat.”
“the “small self” effect of awe arises in all eight wonders of life, and not just vast nature. Finding awe in encounters with moral beauty, for example, or music, or when struck by big ideas, quiets the voice of that interfering and nagging neurotic.”
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