Back in August of 2014, Jill Shargaa did a TED Talk about today’s rampant overuse of the word awesome. In her humorous plea to stop this proclivity of elevating the mundane, she spends her (slightly more than) 6 minutes highlighting things that are truly “awesome.” As she points out, Webster’s Dictionary defines awesome as, “fear mingled with admiration or reverence; a feeling produced by something majestic, sublime, etc.”
With that definition in mind, finding money in your pants pocket, grabbing a rockstar parking space, and the sandwich that you had for lunch are not “awesome.” “If everything is awesome,” Shargaa says, “then there are no highs or lows, no dynamic.” She goes on to list ten things that are truly awesome. Watch the YouTube video for a chuckle.
But she’s right, isn’t she?
Shouldn’t we look to all that is truly awesome in the world for inspiration, instead of diluting the idea with the mundane? The Wall Street Journal ran a piece by Elizabeth Bernstein in their “Life & Culture” section titled, Researchers Study Awe and Find It Is Good for Relationships. The article suggests that if you want to improve your life, go do something awesome. Apparently, research has found that what’s dubbed an “awe experience” increases our “empathetic currency” and makes us more willing to connect with others in a pro-social manner. Bernstein points out that awe is an emotional response to something vast that challenges and expands our way of seeing the world. “We’re not likely to find it on a treadmill at the gym,” Bernstein says. We think Shargaa would agree.
Bernstein’s article also highlights some of the findings associated with “awe experience” research, but what is most insightful is the description of 39-year-old Polett Villalta’s first deep scuba dive: a sunken ship coming slowly into view, the darkness coming alive with coral and fish of astounding color and variation. She finds the ocean awe-inspiring. She is quite awe-inspiring herself, given that she is paralyzed from the chest down and has been in a wheelchair since the age of 12. Villalta’s dive buddies get a double dose of awe, finding inspiration in her ability to transcend her limitations, as well as the inspiration from their own personal experience.
Awe is powerful because it takes us out of our own heads and attunes us to things bigger than ourselves. So get off the treadmill (or the computer) and go do something truly awesome!