A Secret to Happiness? Cultivate Your Passions
My most important happiness-related resolution is, of course,
to Be Gretchen.This resolution has dramatically changed the way I react when I develop – as I sometimes do — unusual interest in a new subject. Nowadays, I allow myself to follow a new passion.
Sometimes, I’ve been able to turn these passions into my work. When I became obsessed with Winston Churchill, I wrote a book about Churchill. What a joy it was to write that book! My preoccupation with St. Therese ended up playing an important role in The Happiness Project.
In fact, quite often, my inexplicable passions end up having a profound effect on my work. But I no longer worry about whether they’ll be useful in that way, or not.
That’s because, a few years ago, it finally dawned on that I didn’t have so many passions that I could drop one without losing an important source of happiness. Children’s literature, for example. When I cultivated my passion for children/young adult literature, I added a huge engine of happiness to my life.
Another passion? A passion for scent. First came my resolution to Cultivate good smells, which led me to the wonderful Demeter Fragrance Library. Then came my resolution to Take a field trip, which led me to the incomparable CB I Hate Perfume.
As I write about in Happier at Home, I developed the classic symptoms of a full-blown passion:
- a return from the library, with a huge stack of books on a single subject
- purchase of more books that my library didn’t have
- purchase of other learning tools (in my case, from the amazing Aftelier site)
- the desire to talk about this subject with every single person I encounter
- the taking of notes without a purpose
- a list of places I want to visit
- a dramatic new appreciation of the influence of the subject in my life
I love the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, of “flow” fame. In his book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, he wrote, “When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it.” Cultivate your passions.
How about you? Have you allowed yourself to cultivate a passion? What was it? Did you have to push yourself to do so?
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Join the happiness conversation over on Facebook, where among other things, I post "Happiness Questions" meant to help you think about your own happiness project. And follow the conversation on Twitter (@gretchenrubin).
(Photo: Steven Frank, Flickr)
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