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Plenty of ink has been spilled on the subject of trying to tame and control our emotions. My own emotional swings have knocked me off course more times than I’d like the record to show.
If you have the personality of an optimizer, always striving to improve yourself or be more efficient, it might be tempting to imagine your life with all of your emotions tamed and under complete control.
Think of all you could accomplish without feeling bored, distracted, disappointed, or overly excited by some new idea. You could simply chug along with your long-term goals and not be bothered with trying to manage your passions.
As I’ve grown older and have spent more time with people decades older than myself, I’ve noticed an interesting trend. When we’re young, our emotions often overpower us and drive our day-to-day lives, but as we age, our moods moderate and passions wane.
We go from too much emotion to arguably not enough.
Just imagine talking with a 20-something versus a 70-year-old about life, hunger, passions, worries, and goals. Naturally, the younger person would be bursting at the seams with energy, while the older person would be more subdued.
Many of these differences are biological, I’m sure, but a good bit of them are also the result of practice. When we’re young, we learn to distrust our emotions and try to put a lid on them—which might be necessary at times. But as we age, we need more of that youthful zeal. Unfortunately, we’re already in the habit of shutting down our emotions instead of tapping into them.
Getting older means entering a dignified season of life. For most people, it comes with benefits such as accrued wisdom and greater contentment.
However, many of us are living with an untapped superpower. While our emotions can be unwieldy and dangerous, they have also driven men and women to great heights of love, passion, and effort in the name of causes greater than themselves.
If you’re looking for more energy and passion in your life, the solution might be to cultivate the embers of your strong emotions and let them reanimate your life. Your older, wiser self will be better equipped to keep them from running your life offtrack and to harness their energy for whatever good you set out to do.
8 Powerful Emotions to Cultivate for a More Passionate You
If you’re ready to actively pursue a new, more passionate self, reignite and harness the emotions that fueled your youth with the wisdom you’ve gleaned over the years.
1. Frustration With the Status Quo
If you’re not happy with your life or something you see happening around you, don’t pretend that it isn’t so bad—act on it. Let your frustration stew and cause you to explode into action.
2. Fear of the Unknown
Every adventure begins with not knowing exactly how things will work out. Safety and security are comforts when they are the rewards of risks taken, but without a price, they merely lull you to sleep. Better to strike out into the unknown and reframe your fear as a sign that you’re living your life as the “man in the arena.”
3. Sadness for What’s Been Lost
Sometimes you lose something you love. Or maybe you’re nostalgic for a time you never had—one lost to the creative destruction of capitalism or progress. You don’t have to be passive about such loss. Rise up and recreate a new version of that great thing or build a monument to its lost greatness so people will never forget.
4. Anger Toward Injustice and Foolishness
If you see genuine evil in this world and it makes you burn with rage, that might be righteous anger swelling in your bones. Too many people read the news and let more and more stories pile into their brains without taking action. Let your anger spur you to action—do something tangible to help those who need it.
5. Longing for Beauty
As someone with a strong aesthetic side, I’ve had days of deep longing for a more beautiful environment to live in. If you want to be surrounded by beauty, start small by creating one truly beautiful room in your house. Expand outward as your resources allow, and remember the exterior of your home, too, as those improvements can also be a gift to your neighbors.
6. Boredom With Everyday Routines
Boredom is one of the most common negative emotions we feel as humans. Unfortunately, many have learned to numb this feeling through endless scrolling on their smartphones. They might not be bored, but are they truly living? Let your boredom inspire you to do hard things, new things, and things that make your life and memories richer.
7. Regret From Past Mistakes
We all have regrets. One that I carry is not using my time more wisely in college and in the years after, when I was drifting along with my innate abilities. I used the gifts of that time selfishly. I still feel the bitter tinge of regret rising up some days, and I try to use it to fuel myself to fill my days with life. In some ways, I’m thankful for that emotion, because otherwise I may have gone on drifting.
8. Love for a Person, Community, or Place
Love starts as a feeling, but real love is an action. If you love something, you should work tirelessly to preserve and strengthen it, and also to squeeze every drop of goodness you can out of it. Whether it’s your marriage, neighborhood, church, workplace, or country—capture that energy and make it drive you farther than any other effort would have taken you.
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Udumbara
