Coaching practices for Awe and the Small Self in a New Job

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

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

  • In the moments something vast cracks me open, I feel this soft pull toward everyone and everything
  • My own problems have swollen up to fill my entire world and I can’t see past them
  • For a little while right after something takes my breath away, the stuff I’d been stressing about genuinely feels smaller and farther off
  • When something makes me feel tiny against how huge the world is, my reflex is to flinch and grab back control, like feeling small is a threat to fend off
  • I feel small and stuck inside my own head, looping on my own problems, and I want something vast enough

Practices that may help

  1. 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.
  2. 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
  3. Deliberately invoke the small-self shift
    Seek an encounter with something genuinely vast to let your personal concerns be re-proportioned.
    Awe and the Small Self
  4. Write from a small-self perspective after awe
    After an awe experience, write briefly from the perspective of someone whose personal concerns feel appropriately small.
    Awe and Well-Being, Made Practical
  5. Courting the small self
    Seek experiences that make you feel small in a good way — and notice the relief in it.
    Awe Walks, and the Science of Wonder
  6. 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
  7. Forming: provide clarity before connection
    In the first stage, a new team needs structure and purpose more than it needs team-building.
    Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development
  8. Engage a self-transcendent purpose
    Connect your daily effort to something genuinely beyond yourself — a cause, a person, or a craft.
    Peak Experiences and Self-Actualization
  9. Spend real time on growth, not just tasks
    Regularly leave the weeds and talk about career, skills, and where they’re headed.
    Effective One-on-Ones, Made Practical
  10. Anchor self-definition in values, not roles
    Define yourself by what you stand for rather than by the roles you play — roles change; values endure.
    Self-Concept Clarity, Made Practical

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