The art of amazement to become better people and managers

In recent centuries, however, the Awe has changed. Experiences of awe lead us towards a more authentic understanding of ourselves and destabilise the hypertrophic ego. According to Dacher Keltner, one of the best-known emotion researchers of recent years, 'the self-transformation brought about by profound awe is a powerful antidote to the epidemic of isolation of our times, and can awaken the better side of our nature'.

Keltner began studying emotion science in the 1980s, is now director of the Social Interaction Lab at Berkeley, and occasionally dabbles as a film consultant: remember the emotions in Pixar's Inside Out? He partly modelled them.

In 2019 he mourns the death of his brother Rolf, to whom he was very close, and for several months he finds himself alienated and anaesthetised to life. He believes he has lost his wonder. In order to recover it, he embarks on numerous adventures (if you are curious, read his How the new science of wonder can transform our lives) and finally sets up a worldwide experiment on wonder, collecting the experiences of Awe from 26 countries, putting together no less than 2600 stories of people of extremely varied ages, cultures, social classes and personalities.

Thus, a 'map of profound wonder' emerged in 2021. Keltner and his collaborators noted eight main sources of Awe, 'eight wonders of life'. Each person is more predisposed towards some, but often the stories they received showed that sometimes the most intense Awe come from experiences we never thought would affect us. Spoiler: if you experience awe often, seek it out, welcome it, make friends with it, you can become a more satisfied person, a more loved (and more capable) manager, a more beautiful person. But let's cut to the chase: let's discover these eight wonders.

1st The moral beauty of other people: their courage, kindness or tenacity. Many people experience an astonishment like an earthquake when they witness you. Can you think of anyone (or even you) saying or doing something truly courageous, inspiring to others? We often feel this in front of a film or literary work, but live the awe is obviously more intense.

2nd Collective effervescence. Group experiences where we feel in turmoil, belonging to something big: events, celebrations, weddings, funerals, where you felt something happening in your gut.

3rd Nature. Impressive landscapes, or small natural wonders. Not so marginal note: many of the participants in the experiment mentioned the night skies, and it emerged how light pollution at night impairs our ability to wonder.

4th The music. As a former musician and composer, this seems pretty obvious to me. Another note: the music and songs that make you feel the most awe-inspiring as a child and teenager will remain the strongest Awe-generators for the rest of your life. True: when I hear the guitar riff of Smells like teen spirit start the world opens up for me and I still jump like a cricket today.

5° The visual structure: architectural, pictorial, urban art generated by human ingenuity. Here it is particularly interesting to propose Edmund Burke's distinction between beauty and astonishment. The former arises from familiarity and comfort, aesthetic astonishment, on the other hand, shakes us, and is linked to 'dark plots', which can frighten us. Want to understand more, and really scare yourself? Read A philosophical investigation into the origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.

6th Spiritual or mixed stories, such as the conversion of St Paul on the road to Damascus, or the Buddha to Nirvana. Or William James' experience of everyday mystical wonderment, which defines religion as 'the feelings, the acts, the experiences of individuals in the solitude of their souls'.

7th Stories of life and death, related to the birth of someone or something, or its end. The stories collected by Keltner are a reminder of how we should learn from cultures that also celebrate death as something not to be feared, to be shunned or 'medicalised' to excess. He himself eventually found inspiration for his research from the death of his brother.

8° Epiphanies: creative ideas, philosophical insights, scientific discoveries so important that they turn a 'simple' Wow into an ecstatic Awe.

Small final note: no one mentioned money or shopping experiences as an Awe moment. No Gucci handbags, Montblanc pens, iPhones or Chevrolets.

I have no doubts: my Awe have experienced them so far in moral beauty, music and epiphanies.

And you?

*Partner & Head of Communication, Newton SpA