A two-minute antidote to perfectionism
Are you overwhelmed by a task? Stuck in a procrastination loop, unable to start (or finish)? Or your inner critic is on a rampage, or maybe you're stuck stewing in guilt and responsibility?
Go find some awe.
I’ve written before about awe as a coping skill particularly suited to feelings of political doom and hopelessness. But it’s useful everywhere.
First, what is awe?
Author and psychology professor Dacher Keltner, PhD defines awe as the emotion we experience when we encounter vastness that transcends our current understanding of the world, challenging us to adapt internally. Or, in plainer language, awe is the feeling of: Holy smokes, I didn’t know the universe could do this!
Awe is experienced—physiologically and emotionally—as somewhere between gratitude and terror, giving us a felt sense of transcendence and insignificance at the same time. Awe has consistent, measurable impact, including reductions in bodily inflammation and stress responses, increases in generosity and cooperative behavior, a more expansive sense of time, and decreased rumination and self-focus.
That last bit is really important. It’s the primary mechanism that can override some of the perfectionistic, self-critical impulses we feel day-to-day. In the coming emails, I’ll dive into why it matters and how it works.
In the meantime, awe is something you can access now. You don’t need to trek to the northern lights or swim with dolphins. Awe is not rare, and it doesn’t take money or a lot of time to find it. The price of entry is just a little attention.
Awe isn't hard to find. I took this photo from the parking lot of a Costco. The photo doesn't do it justice, of course. This particular cloud was so amazing that it made the news and got its own subreddit.
We tend to feel awe in response to a predictable set of stimuli. Here are just a few:
Scale. This could be size—the tremendous or the tiny—or it could be vast portions of time, human effort, or importance. Maybe you’re lucky enough to live near an ocean, or a mountain. Maybe a capacious cathedral or a historical site is more your style. But you really don’t have to go anywhere: everyone lives near the sky. Look up today. Feel your littleness under the great blue expanse, or your distance to the stars. Did you know that the average cumulus cloud suspends over 1.1 million pounds (500,000 kilograms) of water above our heads?
Synchrony. Feel connected to a group. You might have to hunt down opportunities for synchronous experiences and collective effervescence, which are rarer than they used to be in the US. We do still have marching bands, sports teams, church choirs, and country line dancing, to name a few. I’ve felt this feeling at certain rock concerts and on the Maid of the Mist boat, surrounded by strangers as we marveled and screamed en masse at the power of Niagara Falls. But you can find it outside of the human realm, too, in a murmuration of starlingsor a swarm of ants around a fallen sandwich.
Mortality. Awe tends to percolate around the edges of life, both beginnings and endings. Maybe you’ve felt it while holding a newborn, or even a kitten. Maybe you’ve been stirred toward a mix of terror and gratitude during a funeral, or at the news of a natural disaster. Personally, I love a good graveyard, and I live near one of the country’s best: Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland. Among centenarian oaks and maples, I’ve visited the grave of former president James Garfield: a stately tower adorned with life scenes from his service in the Union Army to his assassination. Just a hill away stands the massive obelisk that holds John D. Rockefeller, with its surrounding ring of his loved ones—some of them touchingly young.
So what is the two-minute antidote to perfectionism? Take two minutes to find a little awe around you. Don’t make it a chore; like love and sleep, it can’t be forced. I think of it more like a radio frequency that you can tune yourself to. But studies have shown that even the simple act of looking at a few photographs of beautiful sunsets can have an impact.
Why does it work? What does awe have to do with perfectionism? Let’s talk about that next.
© 2026 Summer Hopkins Myers | Already Good
This work is original and protected. Sharing links is welcome; unattributed reproduction and LLM training are not.
