The first days of a new year feel electric with possibility. Who doesn’t love a fresh start? New Year’s resolutions have been a thing since at least the time of the ancient Babylonians, who made annual commitments to the gods in hopes of good harvests. Modern American iterations tend toward more inward-looking goals: We commit to the self-improving stuff of gym memberships, closet organizers, and dark leafy greens. 

Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, sees such individual focus as a missed opportunity. “I’ve always approached well-being and emotion socially,” he says. In a new book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, Keltner explores the community-wide impacts of cultivating awe, a positive feeling we experience in the presence of something vast. According to Keltner’s research, awe can indeed be nurtured by individuals; however, its impacts extend well beyond our own welfare. 

“Awe unleashes the better angels of our nature, it makes us better citizens vis-à-vis other people,” says Keltner. Resolving to seek awe this year could improve your life and spark positive ripple effects. Keltner cites findings that show awe increases tolerance, strengthens social bonds, and makes us more willing to share resources.

Researchers have long studied the boost that awe provides to individual well-being, from lower stress to increased happiness. But insight into awe’s pro-social benefits are particularly crucial now, at a time when the world’s most urgent problems—from the climate crisis and dwindling biodiversity to racial injustice—will be addressed only through collective action sustained by strong communities. 

And if the idea of seeking awe evokes Everest-size moments that come once in a lifetime, try thinking smaller. In his book, Keltner identifies eight categories of experience as our primary pathways to awe. These “wonders of life,” as he describes them, include bite-size encounters with nature, music, art, and moral beauty and experiences of collective movement (found in dance and sports). In that light, each day presents opportunities to cultivate awe—whether we seize them or not. 

“These practices are very intuitive—people around the world do them just as a part of being human. We dance together, we create music, we tell stories about morally inspiring people,” he says. “We just have to return those simple practices to our complicated modern lives.” Ready to make a daily practice of awe your 2023 New Year’s resolution? Here are three ways to do just that.

1. Go outside

In 2015 a group of UC Berkeley researchers, including Keltner, found that focusing on nature for a single minute can trigger the positive impacts of awe. After spending 60 seconds looking at a grove of eucalyptus trees, study participants showed increased generosity and helpfulness; other researchers have found similar effects after participants sat in a local arboretum for 15 minutes. 

Yards and city parks work great too. If you’re adding awe-triggering nature breaks to your daily routine, maximize those benefits by paying mindful attention to your surroundings—that means putting down your phone, pulling out your earbuds, and tuning in to the sights, sounds, and smells that surround you. 

2. Come together

For some, thrashing at sweaty punk shows offers a kind of transcendence; others prefer shouting along with the crowd at local sporting events. Both are examples of what the French sociologist Émile Durkheim termed “collective effervescence,” a.k.a. moments when we find ourselves moving and acting in sync with those around us. Keltner says these instances provide a powerful source of awe. 

“Through moving in unison and convergence in feeling, a transformation in consciousness occurs,” he writes. “We shift from an egocentric view, seeing the world through our eyes only, to a shared attention to what is transpiring.” If you’d like a bit more collective effervescence in 2023, consider making a list of the ways you’ve experienced that joy in the past. Need a hint? Try community dance parties, pilgrimages, jam sessions, religious services, political rallies, pickup basketball, or even a mosh pit. 

3. Consider moral beauty

Noticing others’ kindness, courage, and perseverance can spark awe too. This manifestation of the phenomenon is a reaction to what researchers call “moral beauty.” Reflecting on those qualities can be powerful. “Take a moment and think about someone whose life has really brought you personal inspiration and meaning,” Keltner says. 

You could know them or not: Examples of human inspiration proliferate in our personal lives and also abound in newspaper stories and literature. In the book, Keltner describes a former gang member who felt sustained by the strength of character he encountered in a jailhouse copy of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. 

Focusing on such moral beauty can be an important part of an everyday awe practice. And while happiness researchers aren’t usually big on the benefits of social media, Keltner notes that in our increasingly digital lives, even Facebook and Twitter can be fodder for awe. So enjoy some vindication for those feel-good memes that circulate in group chats, and if one moves you, pass it on. “We want to share inspiring stories,” he says. “We do that intuitively, and I think that’s a good thing.”