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As children, we are told to live our dreams and follow our passions, but as we age, it gets harder to integrate our passions into our busy lives. We get caught up in “adulting,” and engaging in a passion can seem self-indulgent or a waste of precious time from making a living, raising a family or otherwise being successful. But, recent research shows that having a passion is highly beneficial and can improve performance, enhance relationships and support physical and psychological well-being. And not having a passion can lead to a decrease in psychological well-being over time. In short, there are numerous reasons why we want to be passionate, we just need to give ourselves permission to do so. The Definition of Passion Robert Vallerand, Ph.D., is at the forefront of research on passion. In his book The Psychology of Passion he defines the emotion as a “strong inclination for an activity (or object, person or belief) that we love, value, invest time and energy in, and is part of our identity.” Our passions are our “ers”—as in writer, painter, horseback rider. Our “ers” become a part of who we are. What the Research Says About Passion Robert and his colleagues found a strong relationship between having a passion and positive emotions, concentration, flow (Vallerand et al, 2003) and enhanced psychological well-being (Rousseau & Vallerand, 2008). Engaging in your passion has direct health benefits up to three weeks after engaging in the activity. Our energy levels are high when we engage in a passion, and we experience relaxation afterward, which improves functioning. This is why having a passion promotes performance in many areas of life. Having a passion can also promote positive relationships, even those that take place outside of the passionate activity (Philippe et al., 2010). A 15-year longitudinal study among hockey players shows how passion supports athletic performance. Compared to regular “practice,” being passionate about the activity has the added benefit of making us happy. Having a passion is also helpful when we go through life transitions, such as retiring. Rather than losing a work identity, we can use passions to engage in and nourish. Giving Ourselves Permission for Passion Sometimes we get so caught up in our lives that we forget what we are passionate about. I’ve found that when people learn about the well-being benefits, it gives them permission to rediscover their passions. I have experienced this myself. I was a passionate artist as a child; it was a part of my identity and self-expression. When I graduated from high school, I remember looking at the professional artists in New York and I wasn’t able to see myself sustaining my passion for drawing and painting the way they did. I decided to major in psychology and minor in fine art, business and philosophy and vowed that art would always be a part of my life. I would never let myself get too busy to create art. Fast forward from graduation, and 10 years passed since I had picked up a paintbrush! Robert’s research touched me, yet re-engaging my inner artist felt scary. I spent years building my skill and craft. What would happen when I touched my brush to canvas? I studied perspective, colors and techniques for blending and laying down paint. What if I tried and it was all lost? Robert’s research got me painting again. While I don’t yet consider myself a passionate painter who devotes many hours a week to art, I do consider myself a creator. Creating is my passion. I create experiences for people as a speaker and a teacher. My programs, slides and materials used to be my main works of art. Taking the time to doodle, sketch, paint or color felt like wasted time. Now I see how it fuels my success and well-being. Sometimes engaging in passions requires remembering what you loved as a child. Other times, it requires a research study. Do you need permission to find your passion? What will be your first step? _______________________________________________________________

When Harry Connick Jr. was growing up in New Orleans, his mother would drop him off at school with the same parting words every day: “Be a leader.” “She never explained it to me, and I never asked her what it meant,” Harry says. “But she said it to me all the time. ‘Be a leader. Be a leader.’ I would get out of the car and think she was saying, when they blow the whistle to come in from recess, be the first one in line.” It would be many years, Harry says, before he began to understand that what his mother was saying was, “Do what’s right.” “That might not be the thing that everybody else is doing. I understand that now. It was an incredible lesson to drill into my head at an early age.” A lawyer and later a judge who also owned a record shop with Harry’s father, a New Orleans’ longtime district attorney, Anita Connick exerted an enormous influence on her son though she passed away from ovarian cancer when Harry was just 13 years old. In both little things and big things, Harry says he has tried to follow the example she set. “The big things are staying true to who I am. That means not changing the type of music I play. When pop music was popular, I had lots of opportunities to go down that road. That’s not what I chose to do. I chose to play the music I grew up playing, which was jazz.” He offers an example from his three-year stint as a mentor and judge on American Idol. “It might not have been popular,” he says, “but if there was a 16-year-old girl who was singing lyrics that were inappropriate, I’d feel comfortable asking her, ‘Are you aware of what you’re singing about?’ That took the show in a different direction. Everybody’s partying and having fun and then this stick-in-the-mud is saying, ‘You should know what you’re singing.’ But that’s what I believe, so I’m going to say it. Stuff like that comes up every single day.” His beliefs are on full display in Harry, his daily syndicated entertainment show, which premiered the day after his 49th birthday. Now in its second season, Harry is built around the things that its host and bandleader love: “Music, entertaining people, talking to everyday folks and being inspired by great women. We always wanted to entertain, uplift and inspire. Those were the words that we kept going back to.” The show includes a regular segment that spotlights community leaders—Rachael Steffens, a high school senior who gave up her spot in the band to help a blind musician be a part of the marching procession; Major Christina Hopper, the first African-American female fighter pilot in combat; and Georgie Smith, an interior designer who has created homes for hundreds of foster kids who have aged out of the system. “I’ve spent my life around amazing people who have done fantastic things for their communities. They weren’t necessarily well known for those things, but I certainly thought they deserved to be recognized.” At a time, Harry says, when there’s “an unbelievable amount of divisiveness, negativity and vitriol, I thought, let’s do a show that’s inclusive while celebrating our diversity and the incredible things that we have in common. I know I get tired of turning on the TV and having to switch the channel because there’s so much ugliness, and I think other people do, too.” A Performer on All Stages For all that Harry has in common with his audience and with us, his is a singular career. He started learning the keyboards at age 3; when he was 5 years old he took the stage for the first time, playing the national anthem in front of a couple of hundred people at one of his dad’s campaign stops. “When I finished everyone was clapping,” he said. “I loved the sound of that applause so much that I thought to myself, ‘What do I have to do to get that again?’” Four years later he performed a Beethoven concerto with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra, and at 10 he recorded his first album with a local jazz band. The singer-composer would go on to sell more than 28 million albums, earn 14 Grammy nominations, winning three, including his first for his work on the soundtrack of When Harry Met Sally. Between composing, recording and touring worldwide, he also branched out into acting. His first leading movie role was opposite Sandra Bullock in the 1998 romance Hope Floats. Two decades later Sandra would be the first guest on his TV show. Harry shared the story of how he learned that he’d landed the co-starring role, after an audition in Texas. He was flying back to Los Angeles with Sandra when she began to unbutton her shirt. At first Harry thought she must be feeling hot, but she continued undoing the buttons of her shirt one by one. Finally, she pulled her shirt apart and written on her stomach were the words, “You got the part.” On TV, he appeared in both dramas—Law & Order: Special Victims Unit—and sitcoms—as Dr. Leo Markus on Will & Grace, where he seemed to offer Grace (Debra Messing) a happily-ever-after ending when they wed in the final season of the original series. Alas, that was not to be. As the reboot of the series revealed, the marriage didn’t last, though, as a knockout final kiss showed, their chemistry did. Endlessly versatile, Harry won two Emmys for concert shows, as well as a Tony Award nomination for his starring role in the Broadway revival of the musical The Pajama Game. Family Commitment to Giving Back If performing is something Harry has done his entire life, so is reaching out to others. “That goes back to my dad,” he says. “We’d be at a grocery store, pulling out of the parking lot and there’d be an older person struggling to put her bags in her car. My dad would stop the car and say, ‘Go help that woman.’ When you’re 10 years old, that’s the last thing you want to do. But there was no arguing with him.” Helping others, he says, is a longtime Connick tradition. “There’s a famous family story from the early ’40s of my dad helping this guy who had molasses in a mule-drawn cart. The cart slid and all the molasses fell on the road. This man was stuck, literally, trying to pick up the pieces of his livelihood. My dad was in a car with some friends, and he said, ‘Stop the car.’ His friends were, ‘Why? We’re not going to help that old man.’ And my dad said, ‘Let me out of the car.’ And that goes back to my parents’ parents. It’s an awareness that when you’re called to action, you have to step up.” When Hurricane Katrina devastated Harry’s beloved hometown in 2005, he answered the call. “Now that I have the ability to reach a lot of people, there was no question that I was going to do everything I could,” he says. He helped organize NBC’s live telethon A Concert for Hurricane Relief and was named honorary chair for Habitat for Humanity’s Operation Home Delivery, a long-term effort to rebuild homes for families left stranded along the Gulf Coast. In collaboration with musician Branford Marsalis, Harry launched Musicians’ Village, a neighborhood of Habitat-built homes that also includes the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, a performance, education and community venue. At a U.S. Senate hearing, Harry spoke passionately about his commitment. “New Orleans is my essence, my soul, my muse. I will do everything within my power to ease the suffering of my city and ensure she one day recaptures her glory.” The Women in Harry’s Life Today Harry and his wife of 23 years, former model Jill Goodacre, have imparted the importance of serving others to their three daughters, Georgia, 21, Kate, 20, and Charlotte, 15. “We were in Starbucks the other day and there was some woman who had a tray of drinks,” Harry says. “I told Charlotte, get up and walk that woman to her car. And she came back five minutes later and said, ‘Oh, that woman was so nice. We were talking about all kinds of things.’ You have to be taught that things like that are socially appropriate. Now, the last thing I want to do is paint me or my family as saints, because we’re far from that. But these kinds of things are important and we continually work on them.” Recently, Harry and Jill went public, in both the pages of People and on Harry, about a family crisis: Jill’s diagnosis with breast cancer in October 2012. Having passed the five-year milestone with no recurrence, they were ready to share their experience in the hopes of possibly helping other women by spotlighting the benefit of additional screening. In Jill’s case, an annual mammogram came back clear, but because she has dense breasts, a sonogram was recommended. And it was that test that detected she had stage I invasive ductal carcinoma. Treatment was a lumpectomy followed by radiation. “To get the all-clear after five years was just an incredible relief to us,” Harry says. “Jill is the backbone of our family. If she’s hurting or she’s in trouble, then we all are.” So, what’s the biggest challenge Harry is facing now? “Oh, man,” he says, pausing for a moment before continuing. “I don’t know whether this is my ego driving me, but I want to be a better dad, a better husband and a better entertainer, all of the things I do. That requires a lot of humility, a lot of patience and a lot of listening. And for a person who likes to be the center of attention, sometimes those things can be challenging. But it’s not all about me all the time, and there’s a lot I can learn from the incredible women in my life. It’s a good challenge and one that I enjoy.” Harry on Happiness Be consistent, he says, in hitting the right notes day in and day out. Composer, crooner, TV host, actor, humanitarian, husband, father of three. Harry Connick is way too busy to teach a course in happiness, but he could. “I think it’s the little things you do every day without fail,” Harry says, “that provide the foundation upon which your happiness can be built.” I try to eat well. That’s directly in line with my mood. I’m a real sugar guy, but if I eat a lot of sugar, that’s going to negatively impact everything else. So, I try to be smart about my food choices. Breakfast, today, for example, was scrambled egg whites and Irish oatmeal. I always work out, every single day. I have a streak going where I haven’t missed a day in 7 ½ years. Even when I’ve had a torn Achilles tendon or the flu, I always do something. Some days it’s not much. I’ve been out at a business dinner where I haven’t had a chance to exercise all day and I’ll do calf raises under the table for a half hour. The physical benefits of working out are great, but the mental discipline of maintaining a routine is what helps keep me grounded. I focus on details and fundamentals. For example, I don’t have to write the music for my show, but I do. It takes a lot of time to orchestrate and arrange music for a 10-piece band. That means every note for every instrument and how do they play the note: do they hold it long or short? Do they play it loud or soft? The time I put into that and the attention to details that has to be paid is something that I think informs other parts of my life. Some people might equate it to prayer. You get into a zone. A bomb could go off and you’d never notice it. I think it’s important to find the thing in life that will bring you that.

Ask some of the happiest people in Boulder, Colorado, why the city is so full of joy and their answers might surprise you. For one thing, despite the idyllic postcards, the city isn’t picture perfect. Boulder residents acknowledge its challenges, from a lack of diversity to high housing prices. But each of them has found the path to personal contentment, and it seems their closest friends and neighbors have, too. “It’s a good place to get happy,” says Ralph Noistering, a property owner and manager. “There are optimistic people to bearound.” Experts agree. National Geographic, Gallup and author Dan Buettner recently named Boulder the happiest city in America, citing its natural beauty, adventurous spirit and friendly people. Here’s what the locals have to say on why Boulder is bursting with bliss: Free to be you and me—together A sense of belonging is the single most important factor to contentment, according to Isabella Arendt, analyst at Denmark’s The Happiness Research Institute. “What makes us happy is our friends and family and loved ones,” Isabella says. “It doesn’t matter what you gather around, as long as yougather.” The social networking site Meetup has hundreds of Boulder-area groups, for everything from knitting to stand-up comedy. Boulder’s Craigslist is also full of options for connecting withpeople. And nothing is too out there. In part because of its hippie roots, Boulder has a reputation for attracting the offbeat. Chances are, whatever you’re into, someone has been into something even morebizarre. “You don’t have to feel uncomfortable here,” says Alexander Halpern, an attorney and president of the city’s Buddhist credit union. “We like weird.” Healing waters Perhaps because of the city’s large constituency of Buddhists—including Buddhist university Naropa—Boulder has become a haven of healing. Therapists, yoga teachers and reiki practitioners are plentiful; concepts like self-care are well trodden in casual conversation. There are a lot of people in Boulder working to exorcise their demons, said Kim Thomas, a local therapist at the Boulder Psychotherapy Institute. While that might negatively affect their present mood—“It’s hard and it’s painful work,” she said—the end result is a more peaceful existence. Body movin’ Boulderites are as good at caring for their bodies as they are their minds. The high altitude and challenging terrain draw athletes of all stripes, and physical activity is practiced as both a daily ritual and a leisure activity. Three hundred days of sunshine a year doesn’t hurteither. “It’s so easy to go climbing or trail running,” says Laura Hockenbury, a sales associate at Boulder REI who gave a TED talk about the benefits of being kind to retail workers. Her customers and co-workers frequently ask her how she can be so happy. “Five minutes and you’re in the mountains.” Trickle-down happiness What begs mention in the same breath as Boulder’s natural landscapes are the efforts to preserve access to them. Trails for biking and hiking are plentiful; there are green spaces around nearly every corner. They exist in no small part because of the citizens’ strong will to fund projects for the public good. Though not everybody enjoys Boulder’s $70,000 median income, anyone can enjoy a stroll by Boulder Creek or an exhibit at the Dairy Arts Center, which taxpayers have helped fund for many years. People are willing to put in their time, too: Residents of Boulder are twice as likely to volunteer than the average American, according to the Boulder County Trends report. “If you have a culture of generosity—whether it’s through the state or through private philanthropists—it has a positive effect on everybody’s happiness,” Isabella says. “Generosity is something that makes usevenhappier.” Five ways you can bring a bit of Boulder into your life Be polite. Boulderites love to chat up their cashiers, and traffic is notably mellow. Take time to say “hi” or let a fellow motorist cut in. Exercise. “Move a little every day,” says The Happiness Research Institute’s Isabella Arendt. Bonus points for replacing your car commute with walking or biking, which is proven to boost joy. Strolling to lunch, coffee or for a business meeting works, too. Establish a routine. Alex Halpern, a Tibetan Buddhist, shares a common mantra: The product of discipline is joy. Local property manager Ralph Noistering applies this to his social life as well. He has standing weekly dates with his best friend and his daughter, making those relationships a priority. Give back. Donating time or money creates double happiness, Isabella says: Once for the person giving, and once for thepeople on the receiving end. Do what you love. Even if it’s only one thing, find a way. Kim Thomas never misses a season of adaptive skiing, something she looks forward to allyear.