In a recent study published in the scientific journal 1Emotion1, neuroscientist Virginia Sturm and her team at U.C. Berkeley studied the so-called awe walk, which is a way you can train yourself to morph an ordinary walk into one where you’re delighted by surprises and inspiration.
There’s nothing quite so amazing as having a sense of awe. As Albert Einstein eloquently puts it, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
When we have a sense of awe, our (sometimes obsessive) focus on ourselves diminishes. Instead, we feel connected to things bigger than us and to other people. Awe not only can give you the good kind of goose bumps, but it also can prioritize the way we spend our mental energy, by taking us out of our own head. Like one of those high-beam lights switching off, your vision goes from tunnel to wide field.
And you don’t need to travel to the ends of the earth, climb a mountain, or seek out novelty to evoke that feeling. The beauty of the awe walk is that you can incorporate it into your everyday life. It’s all about the everyday amazing.