Have you ever had a moment where the world fell quiet—not because everything stopped, but because you did? You catch your breath, your shoulders drop, and whatever’s been gnawing at you seems insignificant.
That feeling has a name: awe. In a work culture that treats exhaustion as a status symbol, awe might be a small but radical way of coping with chronic stress. And the best thing is, awe doesn’t require a big overseas trip, or a 180-degree lifestyle overhaul.
The emotion that resizes your life
Researchers at the Greater Good Science Center of the University of California, Berkeley, describe awe as “the feeling we get in the presence of something vast that challenges our understanding of the world.” That sense of vastness is key. It might be physical, like a wide, orange sunset, or human, like watching someone perform their craft so well it takes your breath away.
Awe does two things. First, it stretches your mental map: Your usual means of fathoming scale, control, and importance disappear. Second, it shifts you into what psychologists call the “small self”: your ego softens, self‑focus drops, and you feel like you’re experiencing something that’s bigger than yourself.
Micro-awe and burnout: why feeling small is protective
Workplace burnout thrives in narrowness: narrow time horizons (“everything is urgent”), narrow identity (“I am my productivity”), and narrow focus (“this problem is the entire universe”).
When you’re in that state, “take more vacation” is rarely practical advice, especially in places like the U.S., where workers average less than two weeks of paid time off a year and often feel they can’t use all of it.
Brief moments of awe—call it “micro-awe”—provide a different route. Studies show that people who regularly experience awe in their day-to-day lives report lower stress and higher life satisfaction, in part because awe helps put daily hassles into perspective. Even moments of awe, like looking up at a night sky, can change your nervous system by reminding you that reality is bigger than this Slack message.
The BRNT framework: micro-awe in action
My BRNT© framework—Breathe, Rest, Nourish, Talk—is designed for people with real constraints, which is most of us. Micro-awe isn’t a separate project. Using BRNT, you can weave micro-awe into your everyday life so it becomes a practical, repeatable buffer against burnout. Here’s how it works:
Breathe: micro-awe through microregulation
Breathe is about using breath, yoga, meditation, and movement to connect with your body and calm your nervous system. Micro-awe strengthens that work by making it feel less like self‑discipline and more like self‑permission.
You don’t need 90 minutes to feel this. Try looking at the sky between calls while taking a few deep breaths. Or in your lunch break, take an “awe walk” around the block where your only goal is to notice something that feels intricate or vast, like a cloud formation or a cluster of buildings.
These are microdoses of awe that fit inside a standard workday. The body quietly downshifts; your stress loses its monopoly.
Rest: perspective as real rest
Rest in BRNT is about quality pauses, boundaries, and mental off‑duty time, not just vacation days. Burnout strips rest of its effectiveness because even when you stop working, your mind keeps treating every email as existential.
Micro-awe deepens rest by changing what you see when you step away. Instead of closing your laptop and immediately picking up your phone, you might:
- Sit by a window or step outside and spend three minutes scanning for anything that feels beautiful or surprising—a reflection, a pattern, a bird, a human interaction.
- End the day with a brief look at the night sky or city lights and consciously notice how many lives and stories are continuing beyond your own well-being.
The work will still be there, but it stops feeling like the entire universe. That sense of scale is a form of psychological rest that doesn’t depend on taking swaths of time off.
Nourish: choosing awe over outrage
Nourish in BRNT is about intentionally choosing what you consume—food, information, media, spaces, relationships. Many leaders are saturated with outrage and urgency but starved of wonder. Micro-awe is nourishment that doesn’t require more hours, just different inputs.
Try swapping one doom‑scrolling session for a short video, podcast, or article that reliably evokes awe—science explaining galaxies, a story of human courage, a performance that gives you goosebumps. Another thing you can try is to curate small “awe anchors” around you—a photo that makes you feel tiny in the best way, a piece of art, a plant slowly unfurling new leaves—and look at them during the day.
Talk: sharing awe, not just stress
Talk in BRNT is about social connection, honest communication, and getting professional support when you need it. In many workplaces, conversations revolve around pressure and problems. Awe can subtly shift the emotional climate when leaders bring different stories into the room.
You can start small:
- Open a meeting with a 60‑second “awe moment”—a photo from a morning walk, a short quote, or a brief story of something that surprised or moved you.
- Ask your team once a week, “What’s one thing that impressed you or made you feel part of something bigger recently?” and let those answers circulate.
You’re not ignoring stress; you’re reminding the system that there is more to reality than stress. Over time, that changes how people talk about workload, conflict, and limits.
Micro-awe for maximum impact
For fast and regular impact, awe has to live where you live: on commute routes and coffee runs. In city parks, stairwells, and hospital corridors. In podcasts on the way to work, and in how you notice colleagues’ quiet brilliance.
Remember, you don’t need to leave the country to feel small in a good way. You need a different way of looking at the places and people you’re already moving through.
