Coaching practices for Awe and Vastness

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Awe and Vastness, 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 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
• On the rare clear night I glance up and for a second the sheer depth of all those stars hits me
• My world has shrunk down to my own small worries, and the rare times I stand under a night sky or out at the ocean I feel my problems get tiny and something open up
• 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

Practices that may help

1. 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
2. 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
3. Stargazing and the vastness of scale
   Look up at a dark night sky and let the sheer scale do the work.
   Awe Walks, and the Science of Wonder
4. Cultivate oceanic or cosmic feeling through awe practices
   Regularly seek encounters with what is vast, ancient, or radically beyond human scale.
   Maslow’s Self-Transcendence, Made Practical
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. Audit your life for access to vastness
   Map your environment for how much genuine vastness it contains — and adjust it.
   Awe and the Small Self
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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