What if the story you tell about yourself is already out of date?

In today's solo episode, I explore the psychology of awe and why it might be the key to staying curious for a lifetime. I share memories from my teaching career, a childhood thunderstorm in Alabama, and watching my four-year-old grandsons encounter the world for the first time, all as ways of asking: what still has the power to make your world feel larger?

Tune in and listen to the fifty-fourth episode of I Can Do This, Show Me How! I trace my own path from adult community college student to English professor and how that journey reshaped the way I understood myself. Drawing on a 2003 article by psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, I explore two ideas that changed how I think about growth: vastness, the sense that the world is bigger than we assumed, and the need for accommodation: the moment our old self-concept can no longer hold what we've become.

Learning Points

• [02:39] Reaching financial and personal stability, but noticing a new sense of alignment between work and sense of self.
• [05:02] Keltner and Haidt's 2003 article on awe and its two core concepts: vastness and the need for accommodation.
• [09:50] The idea of self-expansion: the moment your own evidence no longer supports the old story you told about yourself.
• [12:15] Awe isn't always comfortable. It can be beautiful and frightening at once.
• [17:06] The word "yet" and how it keeps us open to not knowing.
• [21:52] How other people's stories can expand our understanding, and how comfort with uncertainty becomes a source of energy rather than fear.
• [28:59] Sit with the question: what still has the ability to make your world feel larger?

Resources

• The Science of Happiness

Let's Connect!

• My Email: ldroseconsulting@gmail.com
• Mentor International: www.mentorfoundationusa.org
• Mentor: www.mentoring.org
• Ashoka Changemakers: www.ashoka.org

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