October 2021
October Mental Health Challenge: Seeking Awe
Awe: "an experience of such perceptual vastness you literally have to reconfigure your mental models of the world to assimilate it."
There is a feeling we experience when we are confronted with something that makes us feel part of something larger than ourselves, it shifts our perceptions of time and can induce feelings of humbleness. You may have felt this when looking at the majestic and powerful Niagara Falls, or maybe when listening to Ludwig Van Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, or listening to a speech by the late Martin Luther King Jr. These different experiences have one thing in common and that is that they can trigger deep feelings of awe.
Awe is a complicated emotion, and if you are not aware of it, the importance of awe inducing experiences may pass you by. Psychology has had a recent fascination with the emotion of awe and it is finding out how important experiences of awe to our overall well-being. In a 2003 paper published in the journal of Cognition and Emotion, psychologist and neuroscientists who studied awe defined it as "the emotion we feel in response to something vast that defies our existing grams of reference in one area or another and leas us to change our perception of that frame of reference." Awe is how we respond when we see something new or novel that does not fit with our understanding of the world.
Experiences of awe benefit us because they makes us feel a sense of self-diminishment, which is a fancy of of saying it makes us feel small. This is not a negative by the way! Feeling small through experiences of awe makes us feel humbled (and decreases feeling of entitlement, arrogance, and selfishness). When we feel humbled it can motivate us to engage with other and feel more connected.
So this experiencing awe thing sound pretty cool, so how do we do it? You can't travel to the Taj Mahal every Thursday, or walk over to the west coast of Canada to gaze over the Rockies. The good news here is we can experience awe in so many accessible and varying ways. Whether it is listening to a moving piece of music, looking up at the CN Tower, or reading a local story about a local hero. Seeking out experiences that elicit feelings of awe will no doubt introduce you to things that you have not yet explored or been introduced too since novelty is also a component of this complex emotion. Stepping out of your comfort zone can be an exciting journey to something your have never explored before. You can visits a new place in your city, read about someone you don't know much about, or watch a documentary of someone who inspires you. Having an open mind as you search for experience of awe will be very important. If you engaged with the worked with a more open mind, you may start see possibilities that you hadn't considered, ask questions you haven't thought about before.
Take some time each day to reflect on this concept and see if there are ways you can experience moments of awe in your day. I am also sharing a video (link below) that I finds inspires me when to connect more with this emotion and reminds me why a diversity of experiences is so vital to our mental well-being.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QyVZrV3d3o
Mental Health Tip: Keep Consistent
Making changes is difficult and trying to implement a new habit or routine can be really hard. Even when we really want to do things differently we can find ourselves slipping back into old patterns without even realizing it. Consistency is word that is thrown around a lot but what does it really mean? Consistency is the act of doing something in the same way. That's it. It's not exciting or glamorous but it is powerful.
Consistency may be the key to making the change that you have been struggling with. Consistency also challenges the "all or nothing" thinking that we can get caught in when trying to do things differently. When we feel like we have failed once, then usually we just give up all together. Consistency can help to work around that because it breaks down the process of change into daily increments that accumulate and create lasting momentum. It may seem overwhelming to commit to doing one thing every single day but it may be even more overwhelming to expect yourself to change overnight. That sounds like way too much pressure!
If I am trying to get more physical movement into my day, trying to get out for at least 5 minutes every day is much more manageable then telling myself I need to go to the gym for a one hour workout. If I am able to be consistent then I can increase that 5 minutes to 10 minutes and then from 10 to 15 and so one. Over time I build on my capacity for physical activity and gave myself room to adjust to the changes I am trying to make.
What is something you have been trying to change? See if you can use this concept to help you accomplish any major or minor changes in life, and let us know how it worked out for you!