The World Is Doing Something Beautiful. Are You Watching?

My whole body inhaled when I read a recent article from Pam McLean – Founder and Chief Knowledge Officer of the Hudson Institute of Coaching – on the practice of seeking awe in everyday life. Her ideas stayed with me, and I wanted to explore them in my own way. So here we are.

There’s a moment I think about often. I was running late, because of course I was, coffee in one hand, keys in the other, mentally rehearsing three conversations I hadn’t yet had. Then I looked up, just for a second. And there it was: a spider web strung between two fence posts, backlit by morning sun, with a thousand tiny water droplets clinging to it. It was incandescent; every thread a tiny prism.

I stood there for probably 45 seconds. Which, if you know me, is an eternity. I paused, almost enraptured, my breathing slowed and deepened, and I just stared.

And I felt … better … lighter, like something had briefly reset.

That was an awe moment. And I nearly missed it.

Awe isn’t reserved for mountaintops and symphonies

Psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, whose research is foundational in this space, describe it as the feeling of encountering something so vast it challenges our current understanding of the world – something that can’t quite be filed away neatly by the mind. Something that makes us feel small in the best way, connected to something beyond ourselves. 

The revolutionary part for me is: awe is available, every day, to most of us, most of the time. We just have to stop treating our attention like it’s perpetually late for something else.

The Practice

I use the word “practice” deliberately, because noticing awe is a muscle; a habit you build. It’s not about forcing wonder or performing gratitude. It’s about widening your aperture just enough for the world to come in.

In McLean’s article, she says, “The muscle we’re building isn’t about seeking bigger experiences. It’s about paying better attention to the ones already here.” 

A few things that work for me and for the people I coach:

Linger a beat longer. Most of us observe something mildly interesting and immediately move on. What if you didn’t? Your neighbour’s front garden is in full bloom. Your kid laughed at something unexpected. A piece of music came on and briefly took you somewhere else entirely. Stay there for a moment. Let the thing finish doing what it was doing to you.

Look at your regular world like you’ve just arrived in it. Think about the last time you were in a place for the first time and how alive everything seemed. That kind of attention can live on your own street, in your own kitchen. The light through the window at 7am changes daily. You’ve just never noticed.

Pay attention to people doing things beautifully. I’m not talking about grand gestures, I mean the nurse who explains something complicated with extraordinary patience, the musician busking in a train station who is giving it everything, audience or not, the customer at the grocery store who helps an older person with their bags without being asked, then quietly disappears. These moments carry something – call it dignity, call it goodness – that has weight to it.

Let yourself be delighted by what you already know. Think about a fact you’ve always known but never really felt: that there are more stars in the observable universe than grains of sand on earth, that the person sitting across from you at dinner has an entirely private inner world you’ll never fully access, that something as ordinary as a conversation between two people is extraordinary when you actually think about it.

Awe Interrupts the Noise

Here’s what I’ve found, both personally and in the work I do with people: awe interrupts the noise. Not forever, not magically, but just enough. It offers a moment of perspective that no productivity system or five-step framework can manufacture.

It also makes us more present, more connected, more patient.

So book the trip if you can; chase the adventure. But don’t wait for it.

The web is already on the fence. The light is already on the floor.

You just have to look for it.