In one sentence
Awe is not merely a rare reaction to spectacular events; it is a measurable, psychologically consequential emotion that can reduce self-preoccupation, increase connectedness and perspective, and be intentionally cultivated through everyday experiences.
Overview
Ferriss opens by observing that his strongest positive experiences frequently involve awe, which influences how he plans his year. He then republishes Ashley Stimpson’s Johns Hopkins essay, which surveys emerging awe research. The article moves from psychedelic-assisted research and virtual reality to the development of the Awe Experience Scale, competing theories about awe’s function, evidence of social and emotional benefits, and practical ways to seek small, regular experiences of wonder.
Core ideas
Awe combines vastness with cognitive overload
The central definition, associated with Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, has two parts: encountering something perceived as vast and experiencing a temporary inability to fit it into one’s existing mental framework. Vastness may be physical—mountains, oceans, childbirth—or conceptual, such as the scale of the solar system or the complexity of photosynthesis.
Awe is broader than spectacular scenery
Nature is the most common reported trigger, but the article also identifies moral beauty, collective movement, music, art, spirituality, big ideas, mortality, and intimate human experiences. Someone’s courage, a loved one’s life story, or a newborn’s response to the sky can qualify.
Researchers are trying to measure it rather than treat it as vague inspiration
David Yaden’s team identified recurring features including perceived vastness, difficulty comprehending the experience, altered time, physical sensations, diminished self-focus, and connectedness. These informed a 30-item Awe Experience Scale designed to capture the emotion’s breadth.
Awe shifts attention away from the isolated self
The article presents evidence and hypotheses that awe may reduce self-focused rumination, provide perspective, and activate processes associated with compassion and altruism. The practical effect is not that problems disappear, but that they may feel less all-consuming.
Awe may have social and health benefits
Studies discussed in the article associate frequent awe with greater life satisfaction and well-being, lower stress, materialism, and isolation, and possibly lower inflammation. Experimental work also suggests that awe-inspiring settings can increase helpful behavior and reduce aggression.
Awe can be planned without being spoiled
The article rejects the idea that scheduling an experience makes it inauthentic. Concerts, museum visits, hikes, viewpoints, shared singing, and travel can all create favorable conditions. Planning supplies exposure; openness and attention determine whether the experience becomes awe.
Intensity and context matter
Yaden cautions that watching a video of the Grand Canyon may not elicit the same response as standing at its rim. This is an important research limitation: laboratory substitutes and virtual environments may underproduce the embodied, high-intensity experiences that awe research aims to understand.
Ferriss’s practical filter is ‘potential for awe’
Ferriss treats awe as a criterion for allocating large blocks of time, alongside activities such as silent retreats, ski touring, occasional hunting, and interest in psychedelic science. The implied planning question is: which future commitments are most likely to produce memorable perspective shifts?
Practical takeaways
- Review past peak experiences and mark which involved awe; use the pattern to guide future calendar decisions.
- Schedule recurring ‘awe excursions’: a compelling landscape, museum, concert, choir, night sky, public lecture, or unfamiliar natural setting.
- Use the eight categories as a menu: moral beauty, nature, collective movement, music, art, spirituality, big ideas, and mortality.
- Look for small daily doses rather than waiting for a once-in-a-lifetime event—an early walk, a wide view, a child’s curiosity, or a meaningful conversation.
- During the experience, pause, clear competing thoughts, and deliberately notice scale, bodily sensations, altered time, connectedness, and reduced self-focus.
- Prefer direct, embodied encounters when possible; a real landscape, live music, or group movement may be more potent than mediated content.
- Treat relationships as legitimate sources of awe. Recall a person’s resilience, sacrifice, history, or capacity for grace.
- Do not confuse novelty or entertainment with awe: the defining test is whether something feels vast and momentarily exceeds your usual way of understanding it.
Caveats and counterpoints
- The article is a journalistic synthesis and advocacy-oriented introduction, not a systematic review. Several benefits are described as associations or early evidence rather than settled causal conclusions.
- Claims about brain networks, the vagus nerve, inflammation, and therapeutic effects remain areas of active research; the article itself notes that researchers do not yet understand the underlying mechanisms well.
- Psychedelic research is presented as an emerging possibility, not as a general recommendation or established treatment. The VR-plus-psilocybin work discussed was focused partly on safety and measurement.
- Awe can be socially ambivalent: reverence toward powerful leaders may support hierarchy as well as cohesion. The article emphasizes prosocial outcomes but gives less attention to awe’s capacity to be used manipulatively.
- Ferriss’s ‘70%’ observation comes from his own past-year reviews and should be read as a personal planning heuristic, not a general finding about everyone’s emotional life.
- The article’s examples and research are largely framed around Western academic and cultural sources, even though the underlying emotion is presented as broadly human.
Questions worth revisiting
- Which of my past experiences genuinely changed my sense of scale, self, or time—and which were merely exciting?
- Which of the eight categories of wonder is currently missing from my life?
- Can I schedule one modest awe opportunity each week without turning it into another performance metric?
- What nearby place, person, artwork, idea, or communal activity might produce awe if I gave it undivided attention?
- When does planning increase the odds of awe, and when does excessive documentation or optimization interfere with openness?
- Could awe help me reframe a current problem without encouraging avoidance or passivity?
Return to this when…
Return to this note during an annual review or when planning a new season. Use awe as one calendar criterion: not a demand to feel amazed constantly, but a reminder to reserve time for experiences that enlarge perspective and loosen self-absorption. The original Ferriss page, published January 24, 2024, republishes Ashley Stimpson’s Johns Hopkins Magazine essay “Awestruck,” originally published in Winter 2023.