I remember Steve Irwin, the Australian wildlife expert and television personality. He was killed by a stingray while snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef. When I heard of his death, I was surprised by my own strong feelings of sadness. I really mourned for his death.

This strong emotional response puzzled me, why would I mourn so strongly for a television star? Sure, I enjoyed his work and admired his television performances. I also appreciated his apparently high level of happiness. But why did I feel such a strong feeling of loss?

Passion bonds people together.

Steve Irwin was an incredibly passionate person. Interestingly, the most memorable politicians and organizers have also been passionate; consider Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and even Hitler.

Expressing passion bonds the people in your social circle to you, and scientific studies suggest that an active and meaningful social life is important to happiness.

Expressing passion helps one achieve happiness in another way. Every person’s mind generates a personal narrative, a story. This internal voice is constantly describing the story of our lives. The story that we tell ourselves, and our physical responses to that story, dictate our level of happiness.

Expressing passion is like turning up the volume on your stereo. However, you need not become Martin Luther King Jr. overnight to take advantages of the benefits of passion. You merely need to turn up the volume one notch.  

1. If you typically use a closed mouth smile to express gladness at some aspect of your life, consider using a slightly wider closed mouth smile instead.
2. If someone asks how you how you are doing, instead of responding with the word “fine”, use the word “good” instead.
3. In your mind, when looking at a pleasant landscape, instead of saying to yourself that the view is “beautiful” use the word “amazing” instead.    

Others probably will not notice these changes, but you will notice, and your life will be brighter because of them.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2007 at 7:06 pm and is filed under Happiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.