Coaching practices for Awe and Meaning

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Awe and Meaning, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I feel small and stuck inside my own head, looping on my own problems, and I want something vast enough
• I keep thinking wonder is something that only happens at a mountain or a grand canyon, so I save it for some trip I never take
• When something strikes me as beautiful I almost always keep it to myself, even with someone right beside me
• I walk every day but it’s either head-down exercise or me chewing on my problems the whole way, and I get back having noticed nothing
• I can’t exactly hop on a plane to see the northern lights, but I’m stuck at home most nights half-watching something while scrolling my phone

Practices that may help

1. Awe and Well-Being, Made Practical
   Awe — the emotion triggered by encountering something vast that challenges your current mental frameworks — reliably reduces self-focused thinking, lowers inflammatory markers in some studies, increases prosocial behavior, and expands the perceived sense of time available. Dacher Keltner’s research shows awe is more accessible than people think and can be deliberately cultivated without waiting for once-in-a-decade peak experiences.
2. Seek out awe as a broadening and self-transcending emotion
   Awe expands perceived time, reduces self-focused thought, and increases prosocial behavior — and it can be deliberately accessed.
   Broaden-and-Build, Made Practical
3. Micro-awe in the ordinary
   Find wonder in small, intricate things when you cannot get to a grand vista.
   Awe Walks, and the Science of Wonder
4. Awe Walks, and the Science of Wonder
   An awe walk is an ordinary walk taken with attention deliberately turned outward toward things vast or wondrous — sky, scale, intricacy, beauty. Doing so reliably shrinks self-focus and lifts mood in controlled studies; the effects are real but modest and depend on actually directing attention outward rather than walking lost in thought.
5. Sharing awe with others
   Experience and talk about wonder together to deepen both the awe and the bond.
   Awe Walks, and the Science of Wonder
6. The awe walk
   Take a regular walk with attention deliberately turned outward toward the vast and the wondrous.
   Awe Walks, and the Science of Wonder
7. Awe and the Small Self
   Dacher Keltner’s research shows that awe — the response to something vast that exceeds our current frame — reliably produces the "small self": a felt diminishment of individual concerns that is experienced as expansive rather than deflating. This shift reduces self-focused rumination, increases prosocial behavior, and expands the sense of available time. The core effects are well replicated; the neural and downstream health claims are more preliminary.
8. Use documentary and large-scale art to trigger awe
   Watch content that conveys genuine vastness — deep space, ecosystems, historical scale — with full attention rather than as background.
   Awe and Well-Being, Made Practical
9. Build a personal catalog of micro-awe triggers
   Identify the small, reliable stimuli in your everyday environment that reliably produce a mild sense of wonder — and use them deliberately.
   Awe and Well-Being, Made Practical
10. Use awe to reconnect with something larger than yourself
    When awe makes the self feel small, follow the natural impulse toward belonging — toward community, nature, or humanity at large.
    Awe and Well-Being, Made Practical

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