The awe walk

Take a regular walk with attention deliberately turned outward toward the vast and the wondrous.

Why it works

Awe is an "outward" emotion: encountering something vast that your current mental model cannot fully contain pulls attention off the self and prompts the mind to accommodate, to update its frame. That outward pull is what quiets rumination and self-preoccupation — the walk supplies the body movement and the novel stimuli; the deliberate attentional set is what converts a stroll into awe.

How to do it

1. Walk somewhere with potential for vastness or novelty — a hilltop, big sky, old trees, even a tall building.
2. Put the phone away and consciously turn attention outward, as if seeing the scene for the first time.
3. Slow down at anything that feels expansive or intricate and let it actually register before moving on.

Evidence

A randomized study of older adults found that a brief weekly "awe walk" instruction increased felt awe and positive emotion over weeks compared with an ordinary control walk, with participants’ selfies even showing a smaller self and bigger surroundings. The Sturm et al. (2022) trial also documented that the awe-walk group showed increasingly greater joy and prosocial emotion the more awe they reported, tying the practice directly to warmer, more connected feeling in daily life. (rct)

The sample was modest and older adults; effect sizes are small and depend on the attentional instruction — the walk alone, without the outward set, is not the same thing.

Sources

• Sturm, V. E., Datta, S., Roy, A. R. K., Sible, I. J., Kosik, E. L., Veziris, C. R., Chow, T. E., Morris, N. A., Neuhaus, J., Kramer, J. H., Miller, B. L., Holley, S. R., & Keltner, D. (2022). Big smile, small self: Awe walks promote prosocial positive emotions in older adults. Emotion, 22(5), 1044-1058.
• Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17(2), 297-314.

Common mistake

Walking for exercise or while problem-solving in your head, then wondering why no awe arrived. Awe requires you to actually look outward and let the scene exceed you; it does not happen as a by-product.