5 Ways to Feel That Are Even Better Than Passion

In the school of life, passion is the prom queen. She’s stunning and impressive, and everyone wants to be around her. We assume nothing of meaning happens without her at the center. But I for one believe she’s been given a little too much hype.

How important is it to bask in the queen’s attention? To have her blessing and follow her to the ends of the earth? Do you assume, like many, that you’re born to do one thing, and once you find it, you’ll be happily ever after?

I have always taken issue with this idea, mainly because it’s confusing—we think we need to “find” a passion to be passionate; as if your passion—a goal, a career, an activity—were the only vehicle to a sense of wholeness or happiness. So do we want to find a passion, or do we simply wish we felt energized, focused, and fulfilled?

The idea that there’s just one passion for you—and you need to find it quick—can have the opposite effect, actually. If you believe that what you’re meant to do is dyed in the wool, the idea that you must feel that way all the time may contribute to a kind of tunnel vision.

Why a focus on finding passion may backfire

In a paper published in Psychological Science, Stanford psychologists Carol Dweck and Gregory Walton, along with Paul O’Keefe, conducted research to explore whether how someone thought about passion affected their interests.

When participants who believed their passion was fixed were given a very challenging piece of material about their subject, their interest dropped far more than the growth-minded group. In other words, when things got hard, they were out. (“Whoops! Must have picked the wrong one!”)

They were also more likely to curtail interests they believed lay “outside” their born passion. To put it another way, a fixed mindset around passion could in fact limit your exposure to the very things that you could become passionate about. Think about that.

Passion is a feeling and feelings change

My point is: It doesn’t help to get fixated on passion. As I said in my 2015 TEDx talk, “Stop Searching for Your Passion,” passion is a feeling, and feelings change. That is their nature. We don’t and can’t and wouldn’t want to feel one way all the time. The idea of your career having to reach and achieve orgasmic heights day in, day out is, well, a lot to expect. Even for those who love what they do!

5 Ways to Feel That Are Even Better Than Passion

What follows are five feelings that are just as valuable, if not more, than passion—and surprising reasons why you might want to allow yourself to spend more time with them.

1 | FEEL: Enthusiastic

Don’t confuse enthusiasm with passion; they’re not the same. Enthusiasm gets short shrift. Whereas passion says, “This is the hill you must die on,” enthusiasm says, “I could get into this.”

That’s because enthusiasm isn’t limited to a specific area of interest, an industry, or a major. It’s not a goal in and of itself; it’s a stance you take. Whereas passion can carry a lot of baggage (the long, torturous soul search, wondering if this what you’re “meant” to do); enthusiasm is light on its feet. You can take it anywhere–to a dinner party, a board game, a trip to Costco.

Enthusiasm is the decision to be fully present, all in. It’s a wonderful weed: Hearty, persistent, and can grow pretty much anywhere. And while you can’t decide to be passionate about a thing you don’t care about, you can endeavor to be enthusiastic in the face of it.

For instance, I don’t have to be passionate about the financial industry (I’m not) to be enthusiastic about working with people who do (which I am). I’ve loved the brand work I’ve done with financial advisors. I don’t have to be personally motivated by stocks or retirement plans in order to get curious and engaged and to enjoy the work itself.

The great Brenda Ueland, author of the 1938 classic If You Want to Write, said, “Enthusiasm! This is the sign that the creative fountain is in you.” The commitment to be enthusiastic is a creative act in and of itself.

It’s contagious in the best way. And no one ever regrets it.

TRY IT: Go all in.

I don’t care what it is and whether or not you chose to do it (a weekend trip, an off-site, etc). Decide to be enthusiastic about it, even if your preference would be not to bother. Consider it a test of intention. I personally would rather have enthusiasm under my control than be at the whim of whatever happens.

2 | FEEL: Pissed

Never underestimate the power of being pissed. Steamed. Ticked. Even livid. Harriet Lerner, PhD, writes in her famous book, The Dance of Anger, that the pain of anger “preserves the very integrity of our self,” and “can be a powerful vehicle for personal growth and change.”

Being pissed has perks: It can give you firepower and fuel, can clarify your thinking, and give you the courage to stand up for your rights and the rights of others. The problem? We (women in particular) have been conditioned to bury our anger, tuck it behind a wall of guilt and shame instead. Otherwise we might scare someone (oh no! How unladylike!).

If you don’t allow yourself to experience or express anger, there are consequences. Suppressed anger is not gone or “fixed”; it accumulates, builds rage, resentment, and blocks all your other efforts, too.

“The amount of creative, intellectual, and sexual energy that is trapped by this need to repress anger and remain unaware of its sources is simply incalculable,” Lerner writes.

We need anger. It has the power to bring about change. Without it, many of us couldn’t vote, and I wouldn’t be able to open a line of credit without a man’s permission (I’m sorry, what?). Also, there would be no standup comedy.

And get this—an Australian study on climate change found that people expressing anger about climate change were more likely to engage in climate change solutions.

So should you just vent more? No, actually. Venting, says Lerner, is counterproductive and does little to create change, and may reinforce old patterns. Channeling that anger into productive, focused conversations and efforts is key.

TRY IT: Don’t just vent your anger; use it.

When you feel anger rising, let it. Notice what it feels like. How can you use this emotion to clarify your thinking? What can you do to change the situation that doesn’t involve losing control?

3 | FEEL: Awe inspired

While being pissed narrows our focus, awe expands it. If you’ve ever gaped at the night sky or the Grand Canyon, you know the feeling. We’re most likely to experience this out in nature—which can make us feel at once small and yet connected to a larger whole.

In her book, The Extended Mind, Annie Murphy Paul cites the work of Dacher Keltner at the University of California, Berkeley, and others on the subject of awe, which she refers to as “pleasurably fearsome.”

She explains that awe acts as a “reset” button for the brain, and can prompt a series of psychological changes. “We become less reliant on preconceived notions and stereotypes. We become more curious and open-minded,” she writes. “The experience of awe,” she says, “can cause us to update and integrate our idea of the world, truly shifting our perspective.”

The perks of awe? People who frequently experience awe are also more likely to be social, generous, and helpful, and feel they have more time, not less. Studies reported by writing fellow Summer Allen, PhD, for the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley found that people who felt awe were more likely to volunteer their time for causes they believed in.

Another study cited in Allen’s article found that experimentally inducing study participants to feel awe “led them to acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses in a more balanced way and to better recognize how outside forces contributed to their successes.”

Awe can also decrease feelings of stress. In one study, subjects who reported more awe had lower levels of stress markers in their blood, which were correlated with increased reports of satisfaction and life appreciation.

TRY IT: Take in something bigger than you.

You can’t experience awe on your couch. Not unless you’re scrolling through Neil deGrasse Tyson’s TikTok (which will do in a pinch). Go somewhere that shifts your perspective: Lose yourself in the view, in the landscape, enjoy the awareness of being a tiny speck on a rock hurtling through outer space. Because that is basically what’s happening.

4 | FEEL: Nostalgic

The word nostalgia comes from the Ancient Greek nostos meaning “home,” and algos meaning “pain”—so literally the pain of being away from home. Fun fact: It also used to be categorized as a mental disorder.

There’s actually a trend toward staying home or moving back. And those who do move away often wish they hadn’t. CNBC reports that 75 percent of people who moved in 2022 regret it. Tied for the #1 reason? They missed home.

There’s a salty-sweet, pleasure-pain feel of nostalgia that’s hard to resist—a yearning for places, people, and even ourselves at another age. Maybe we think of them as better than they were, fine, but that’s part of what a nostalgic lens does—casts our past in a Golden Hour glow.

While it may seem sentimental at best, and emotionally masochistic at worst, nostalgia is important—it allows us to recall and reprocess key life events, to construct a narrative of our lives, which contributes to a sense of purpose and meaning.

It may even make us better people. For a study conducted at University of Southern California, researcher David Newman pinged participants randomly throughout the day through an app on their phone and asked them to report on their emotional state, activities, people around them, positive memories and levels of nostalgia. They found that higher reported levels of nostalgia and the recall of positive memories correlated statistically with reports of higher self-esteem, optimism, self-confidence and future orientation.

Newman’s meta-analysis of nostalgia also found that recalling a positive memory can inspire us to be more generous and to feel part of a larger whole. So break out those yearbooks.

TRY IT: Cue up the playlist.

Want to experience a real-time montage of your life? Head to Spotify to dig up those songs you loved 10, 20 years ago, and watch every memory spring to life. Want a triple dose of nostalgia? Play the songs while looking at pictures and then spend a few minutes writing about what you remember in detail. Bonus points if you write a letter to an old friend. Even if you end up crying, you will have touched a chord of meaning, and it matters.

5 | FEEL: Bored

I spent every Sunday of my life at Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Church. A thousand hours spent standing in a pew ten rows back on the left. There I am, staring into space. Bored out of my gourd.

You might think you’re too busy to be bored. Not so fast. Mark Hawkins, PhD, author of The Power of Boredom, says the busier you are, the more bored you may be. “We experience ‘full’ existential boredom when we are busy with our lives, but there is very little that interests us or engages us about it,” he writes.

Boredom, he says, is the most important human emotion. (Yup.) And that’s because when we stop running from it and allow ourselves to experience it, we can access the space and potential that nothing else can give us.

Boredom is not an absence of activity, he explains, but the loss of meaning. When you look around and realize you don’t give a shit about anything? That’s when boredom is most valuable to you. That’s when you realize that the meaning and importance you normally assign to things is arbitrary, and usually sold to you by someone else.

Like anger, boredom acts as a kind of clarifier: It reveals to us what actually matters. I think of it as a detox for the soul.

Anything can become boring: Laundry. Dinner. Your dream job. Even sex. I find my hair terribly boring (when it’s not being obnoxious). It doesn’t mean something’s wrong; it means you’re human.

Want to be more creative? Stop doing stuff. “Great ideas come when we are most able to let our unconscious thought processes come to the surface,” writes Hawkins. And you need to make room for that to happen.

Research bears this out. Sandi Mann, author of The Science of Boredom: Why Boredom Is Good, found that boredom can boost creativity. In one study, she had participants copy numbers out of a phone book and another group read the phone book, and then they were each given a creative task to complete. The most creative? The ones who read the phone book. Being that bored primed them for creativity.

TRY IT: Stop filling time.

Try a walk without ear buds. Thirty minutes on the couch with no scrolling, no watching, no nothing. Think that’s unproductive or a waste of time? Get comfy with boredom and you’ll discover just how many things don’t deserve your time or energy. And not to worry—like most feelings, this one won’t last, either.

These of course are just five feelings that get overshadowed and overlooked. You have access to so many others. And what’s clear to me, after writing this anyway, is that it’s not the emotions themselves that are dangerous or bad, as much as what we do to suppress, avoid, or ignore them.

Life is rich. Surprising. Unpredictable. Fun. Terrifying. It’s easy to get so caught up being busy searching for the “right” thing to do, that we miss out on the full spectrum of feeling and fulfillment that life has to offer.

Now go sit somewhere and do nothing.