Episode Transcript
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Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast,where we help you uncover and
foster your most joyful self.
Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr.Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of
soulful and scientifically sound tools tospark your joy, even when it feels dark.
When you're ready to experiment with morejoy, combine this podcast with the full
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Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach.
Hey, everyone.
Aimee here for this intro andalso for the episode itself.
I wanted to offer you this encore episodeon obsessive versus harmonious passions
because we've talked a lot about goalsabout equanimity, certainly in our
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Element of Joy, resilience, we're gettinginto hope now, and as we're thinking
about our, the goals we're setting,how we're working on changing thoughts
and behaviors, I think it's reallyimportant to have this foundational
understanding of what is harmoniousand what is compulsive or depleting us.
And so this is an opportunityto just kind of take notice.
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So.
I really like sit comfortably forthis episode so that you can take it
in um, and practice, uh, a little bitof check-in to see where am I sitting
with my goals, my passions, my hopes.
And then in the next severalepisodes for Hope, we'll get into
more healthy ways of creating changeand harmonious passion in our life.
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Hey folks, it's me, Aimee, hereto chat about harmonious passions.
Before we dive into harmonious passions,though, I first wanna talk about the last
half of this term, which is passions.
So I'm sure you've all heardlots of quotes about passion.
A few that make me want to throw arock through my mom's window are,
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"make passion your paycheck" andand "make passion your work, and you
will never work a day in your life."
Those rub me the wrong way, and I'llmaybe explain why as we get into this.
So I love what I do.
I am passionate about it, but therehave absolutely been times when I've
burned out and I've had to ask myself,is this a passion or an obsession?
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So that may sound kind ofextreme, but it is really common.
I hope our chat todaysort of highlights this.
So having a passion always getstouted as sort of the best.
And when it's going good, it's associatedwith things like enhanced motivation,
improved wellbeing, um, more of a senseof meaning and purpose in your life.
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But passion can also be associatedwith negative emotions, rigidity
and compulsivity, exhaustion.
These are massively differentqualities to be associated with
this, uh, concept of passion.
There's more in there.
So a researcher, well known fora lot of research on motivation,
Dr. Robert Vallerand coined thesetwo ends of the passion spectrum.
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One side is harmonious passion,it's related to all those
feel good things I noted.
The other side, is obsessive passions.
Those passions can lead to things likerigidity, negative emotions, exhaustion.
So here's the difference between the two.
Let's get into this because on theirface, externally, these very opposite
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types of passion can look the same.
It's funny as well though, um, that theetymology of the word passion, so in
Latin, passio means suffering or enduring.
Puts another little twiston the word passion, right?
"Make suffering your paycheck."
It's true for, unfortunately,too many folks.
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So let's get into it.
Vallerand noted that harmoniouspassions have a quality of
autonomous internalization.
That means we feel incontrol of the passion.
We choose when to engage in it,uh, and it gives us pleasure.
We'll talk about savoring inthe next several episodes.
These harmonious passionsare something we can savor.
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These harmonious passions also helpus build skills and mastery, cultivate
relationships, and all sorts of otherjoy and resilience boosting things.
Passions can absolutely be a superpowerful healing force in our lives.
That's why we want tohave harmonious passions.
Now, an obsessive passion has whatVallerand noted as a controlled
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internalization, really of thepassion in our personal identity.
It's like we lose control andthe passion begins to rule us.
We feel this internal pressureto participate in it, often to
satisfy some external validation.
And these activities, thesepassions, become really hard to savor
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because we feel controlled by them.
They can start to pull usaway from other activities and
relationships, and our own self care.
So when we are stuck in an obsessivepassion, we may feel like we're missing
out on other stuff that we could have beendoing had it not been for our passion.
So you can imagine resentmentrises up, frustration can set in.
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We just can't savor the passion anymorewhen it dictates all of our decisions,
often at the cost of our wellbeing.
The logical sort of common endpointto obsessive compassions is burnout.
So the classical article on thisdualistic approach to passion comes from
Vallerand and colleagues, back in 2003.
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The study relied on over 900participants to really understand
how folks' passions either helpedor hurt their overall wellbeing.
Study was built on likethree smaller studies,
I'm gonna summarize them all quicklybecause I think it can really help
us to see the difference betweenharmonious and obsessive passions.
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So in these series of studies,harmonious passions were related to
feeling good while doing the activityand immediately after, pretty obvious.
That's good.
Also, if folks were preventedfrom engaging in their harmonious
passion, they did not experiencenegative affect or cognition.
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That means if life came up in some way,missing the activity would not drop
their mood and they didn't feel likethey would suffer negative consequences
as a result of missing the activity.
Now, for those whose passions, uh, wouldbe considered obsessive, these were
not associated with positive affector cognition during the activity.
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That means the participants actuallydidn't enjoy it when they were
participating in their passion.
And if folks were prevented fromengaging in their passion, they were more
likely to experience negative affect.
They had a drop in mood.
This inability to engage inthe activity, uh, would make
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them feel bad about themselves.
There's something else that theyfound in the series of studies,
uh, and it's something callednon-productive persistence.
That means doing something that doesn'treturn any value for you, and it may even
harm you, but you just keep doing it.
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We've all been there, I think, stuckin the grind or the pit of doing
something that just depletes you.
There's an interestinginterpretation for this finding,
you know, as it relates specifically toa passion here that I think is helpful.
The researchers noted that thisnon-productive persistence may be due
to the tendency for obsessive passionsto be wrapped up in our self-worth.
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So that means we kind ofanchor our self-esteem and our
identity around this passion.
It becomes almost solely who we are.
It's our self-worth.
Without this passion, I'm nothing.
Without succeeding in this, I'm nothing.
So there's this obsessiveside of passions.
There's this harmonious side,and I think we really need
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harmonious passions in our life.
It's worth it to tease them apart andto cultivate harmonious passions to back
off on ones that have become obsessive.
I really like the wisdom here fromum, Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
He says (08:26):
"To have a good life. It is
not enough to remove what is wrong
with it. We also need a positive goal,otherwise why keep going?" So, how
can we check in to see if somethingis harmonious or obsessive, and
then to recalibrate if we need to?
There's a pretty simple practiceproposed by Dr. Barbara Frederickson.
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So let's do it right now.
We'll just start first with reallyidentifying if something is a passion.
So Here's the question.
Is there an activity, interest of yoursthat comes up in your daily thoughts?
Just pops up?
So if something takes up somespace, if you think about
it daily, pops up randomly.
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Might be a passion.
If nothing pops up, it'sfine, just listen in.
Nothing has to arise.
I think building harmoniouspassions is a byproduct of Joy Lab.
So just sit back and relax.
Now, if something did pop upin your mind, Dr. Frederickson
then suggests we can check in totease these two passions apart.
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So, how do you feel when thatpassion, possible passion rises up.
How does your body feel when it pops up?
Do you feel open, does it make yousmile, send a little happy rush?
Maybe a bit of inspiration or motivation?
If so, that's probablya harmonious passion.
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On the other hand, did you feelsome tension when your passion
popped into Did you feel a bitof anxiousness or constriction?
Did it feel kind of looming?
Maybe even guilt or agitationor resentment sort of rose up?
If this sounds more true for you though,this might be an obsessive passion.
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I'll give a quick example.
So early in my undergraduate years,I became passionate about increasing
access to mental health and bashingthe stigma of mental health.
Read all the books, attended allthe classes, watched all the things.
I worked all the time toward this.
And when this passion poppedinto my head, I'd feel kind of
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frantic, desperate, insecure.
I had to make this happen.
I had to spin my wheels tohelp as many people as I could.
So I, I kind of built up my self-esteembased on how much I knew how many people
I could help, helping others becamesort of wrapped up in my own self-worth.
And I used my passion as a busy, busyexcuse not to do my own healing work
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or just make time to care for myself.
So burning out, exhaustion, sort ofbecame a sign that I was doing the work.
I was so committed.
And this is socially endorsed, hustleculture, productivity, busyness.
We'll talk a lot about those things inthe next several episodes on savoring,
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we've built obsessive passions into thefabric of our working lives in the US.
There's a lot of pressure to make passionsyour identity, pursue them with everything
to get into the fancy college, to turnit into a business, into your brand, use
it to build your social media following.
So my passion had a leash on me.
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It was pulling me around in a sociallyacceptable way, overworking, uh, and I've
worked at this a lot, but I still have tocheck in on my work and back off at times.
Cause I do, I love what I do, butit's no longer an avoidance, strategy.
It's no longer an obsession.
So we can recalibrate thingsthat maybe have veered toward,
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obsessive, we can scale back.
Like to follow Lilly Tomlin's advice here:
"For fast acting relief.Try slowing down."
Sometimes it's that simple ofjust backing off of a passion.
I can hear the criticism.
If you wanna succeed, youhave to have the extra edge.
You need to be hustling all the time.
You need to make all the sacrifices.
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And it's, it's just not true.
The same study, and there's othersI've been referencing, uh, Vallerand
and colleagues, noted that becauseharmonious passions are associated with
more flexibility in thinking and improvedfocus, also associated with feelings
of less pressure and anxiety, then evenif your passion is your paycheck, it
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is likely to your advantage to keep iton the harmonious side of the spectrum.
Ask any athlete who has,veered into obsessive passion,
it will crush your game.
Your mental game and then your performanceon the court, on the field, whatever.
It's the same for all of us.
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So if you have access, it can be reallyhelpful to work through the dynamics
of this with a therapist or with atrusted friend if you don't have access.
Identifying some of those things thatare fueling the obsessive pattern of
your passion, uh, is very helpful.
But it can be kind of hard to see thesituation when you're soaked in it.
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So a loving friend or a practitionerwho can offer some outside
perspective, um, might be helpful.
And then one other simple strategy,I'll gave you the other one of
just backing off, slowing down.
But another one to consider is tocultivate a new, harmonious passion.
Something that engages you, that makesyou smile when you think about it.
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Something that you won'tstart a new business around.
Something that is easy for youto get started on right away.
So for me, that was learning how tomake macaron, the french pastry cookie.
I wanted something to do thatwas scientific, but creative.
Something that I could eat, somethingthat I could share with others.
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Uh, macaron were perfect as wellbecause those things are so expensive
and I could not afford to buy themat the rate I wanted to eat them.
So this was like the sweet spot,literally the sweet spot, for
harmonious passions for me.
Um, and I am passionate about it now.
I don't know if I will be insix months, which is great.
You don't have to pick somethingthat will stay with you forever.
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You don't have to pick somethingthat you're even good at.
I was terrible at the start.
I'm still not very good at makingthose cookies, but they taste good.
Uh, and I like the process.
It's fun.
You know, it's something that justignites some good feelings when
you think about it and participate.
Outcome, expertise, marketability,those are not what give
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harmonious passions their power.
So there is something, even if it's reallylittle or seems silly, or only gives
you a little flicker or a light, try it.
Do it.
It'll create a bit moreharmony in your life.
Or as I said, maybe there are some shiftsyou wanna make in your current passion
that has maybe veered toward obsessive.
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Uh, backing off.
Resting more.
Seeing it in a different light.
And then perhaps that spark can come back.
Or maybe it's time to turn thepage and explore something new.
So I, I hope that you have, founda little bit of insight here with
harmonious and obsessive passions,maybe some inspiration to engage in
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something that has been on your mind.
That makes you smile.
Or to recalibrate and find something or abalance that can be a bit more nourishing.
And I'm gonna end with somewisdom from the brilliant scholar
and theologian, Howard Thurman:
" Don't ask yourself what the world needs.
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Ask yourself, what makes youcome alive and go do that.
Because what the world needsis people who have come alive."
Thank you for listeningto the Joy Lab podcast.
If you enjoy today's show, visitJoyLab.coach to learn more
about the full Joy Lab program.
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