The Science of Awe — What is Awe?

Hi, I’m Paul Krismer, I’m your happiness expert and you can probably tell I’m coming to you from Paris, and behind me is the Palais de Versailles, the Palace of Versailles. It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous spot on earth and we are going to talk in this video about beauty, the sense of awe that we get, and the scientific relationship we have to when we have those experiences of beauty and awe. The benefits we get, the profound way that it changes our perspective on earth, and in fact as we look at this particular palace and a bunch of other things today, we’re going to talk about how it changes our ability to be circumstant and thoughtful about the details of the world that we see within and around us. So, that topic, the benefits of beauty and awe, is coming right up.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful.

Yeah, so of course I’m here in Paris, and why am I shooting a video about awe and beauty in Paris? Well, because this is the city of love, it’s the city of so much beauty. One of the things I guess I’d like to point out is that there’s so much artisan work here where people are in little boutique shops still building and perfecting their craft. In fact, I bought a pair of leather shoes here the other day from a fourth generation custom men’s dress wear shoes that’s all they do, and you know, it was a pretty expensive treat but it was beautiful. The craftsmanship was amazing. People cooking great food, people making custom furniture, florists that are doing amazing work, this is the kind of thing that you see here with tremendous beauty and this appreciation of fine fine things.

Yeah, so this week’s video is all about beauty. Beauty is kind of one of the 10 positive emotions that we put under that umbrella of happiness. Happiness includes all kinds of positive emotions, things like joy, gratitude, curiosity, inspiration, pride. All those things are good emotions that fall under the umbrella of happiness. But beauty and awe is a unique one, and it’s maybe particularly special, and that often leaves us without words. We don’t have descriptions for what gives us a sense of awe. It’s when we’re floored and left speechless. Beauty is one source of awe, there’s also things that cause transcendence where we’re filled with a spiritual feeling, or when we’re in great scenes of nature is another place where we feel awe, and then maybe the last category of awe is when we see people doing truly amazing accomplishments. When you’re watching somebody paint a picture, or an athlete do something amazing, all of those things could be sources of awe.

Awe is like so many other positive psychology things, that when we’re experiencing positive emotions we get basic benefits to ourselves. We get better health as one of the main ones. But with awe, there’s some unique things too, we’re better connected with other people. We have kind of more generosity and humility that comes in which of course wonderful, and the one I really appreciate is that we’re better critical thinkers. We actually are less persuaded by weak arguments which is so vital in today’s world. Everybody should be filled with awe so that we’re getting less of the kind of bizarre conspiratorial theories brought into our brains and our little echo chambers of certain social media, and we’re more critical, we examine detail better, we investigate better. So there’s really some fundamental beautiful benefits of awe.

There’s a little aside I can tell you about awe too. When we scientifically test for people feeling the experience of awe, particularly when they’re getting it from a natural setting, we tend to see ourselves more contextualized in a place of humanity being just one part of the world. You know, in the palace here where I’ve been touring, so much of the art is all human-centric. Kings that are the front and center in the pictures and overly large and riding on horses over other people, it’s all about people, in particular this one special person. But when we’re actually feeling inspired by art, we would tend to paint ourselves in the corner of the picture, and make it part of something much bigger and natural, where we’re not less happy but we’re content with our place in a bigger sense of universe. And I think as I describe that you can feel that sense of awe that’s different, that’s wow there’s something big and beautiful out there rather than wow I’m the big and beautiful thing. Does that make sense?

That’s all. Thanks for watching. If you like this kind of content, click the like button, share it with your friends and family, and maybe even your HR director. Until next time, I’m Paul Krismer, I’m your happiness expert.