It's Time to Rebrand Hobbies

Somewhere along the way, we started believing hobbies were frivolous, self-indulgent, or reserved for people with more free time than we have. But the science tells a very different story. In this episode, Jackie unpacks the surprising research behind hobbies and why they're linked to greater happiness, stronger relationships, better health, deeper purpose, and a richer sense of identity. She also explores why so many high-achieving women recoil (ahem, get the serious ick) at the very word hobby, how our culture has distorted its meaning, and why reclaiming activities that genuinely light us up isn't indulgent for women... it's essential to our flourishing.

References:

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row.

Fadjukoff, P., Pulkkinen, L., & Kokko, K. (2016). Identity Formation in Adulthood: A Longitudinal Study from Age 27 to 50. Identity, 16(1), 8–23. 

Fredrickson, B. L. (2004). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist.

Fredrickson, B. L., & Joiner, T. (2002). Positive emotions trigger upward spirals toward emotional well-being. Psychological Science.

Oishi, S., & Westgate, E. C. (2025). Psychological richness offers a third path to a good life. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. Free Press.

Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Zhao, J. et al. (2025). Hobby engagement and all-cause and cause-specific mortality risk among people aged 50 years and older in 19 countries. Journal of Global Health.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Get a Life. This is a podcast for women who feel the pull towards something more. Women ready to become the main characters of their own stories and build lives filled with interesting experiences, passionate pursuits, and adventures big and small. I'm Jackie Cascarano, former lawyer, turned women's wellness coach, and I'm a practitioner of positive psychology, the science of well-being. I help high-achieving women reconnect with themselves and create lives rich with authenticity, alignment, and agency. We're talking about one of the most underrated and underutilized pathways to flourishing for women specifically. And I want to really reclaim a word that I think has lost its meaning almost entirely for specifically one half of the population. And the word is hobby. It's an awful word. What, like, what is it about the word that gives me the heebie jeebies? I'm trying to, I'm trying to parse it out. Um, I think it's as a high-achieving woman, that's how I identify. I've been trying to reflect on this because I'm focusing on this topic so much, right? But I think it's that I am too busy, and not that I'm like too important personally, because I'm not, but like I have too many important things to do to have a frivolous, trivial thing like a hobby. So this is this is my internal monologue, by the way. So this is this is why I think I have the heebie jeebies immediately when I hear the word hobby. I feel like hobbies are for people who have way too much time on their hands, like uber rich, like country club people, right? With servants who bring them lemonade. Like, who are these people? These are characters I'm making up in my head. And when I encounter someone who has a hobby that they are passionate about, and you know, like most of the time, they're not actually retired people. These are people that are my age, and I encounter them. And you know what? I very honestly, my gut reaction is to judge them very hard. I'm like, who are you to have all this free time? I judge them and then I slowly realize, my friends, and this has been like a year or two of focusing on this, that I'm now realizing this. I realize I'm actually jealous of them and I want to be them. Like literally, I want to be her. I want to be this woman who is so chill and well adjusted and has the time and the bandwidth and the energy people for a hobby. Do you guys know what I'm talking about here? So that's that is my internal monologue that was very vulnerable. But I think it's true. All of us, we have responsibilities if we are women in midlife, high-achieving women, even if you're not in midlife, we have things to take care of. Maybe we have families demanding jobs, maybe aging parents that we're taking care of. Also, maybe passion projects and things that we are committed to, like nonprofits, a lot of stuff. We have a lot of things. And maybe you're wondering like, why is this lady talking to me about hobbies? And I know because I share your response. Okay. Um, it has taken me a lot of time of researching this topic to really change my outlook on it. And by the way, as an aside, I just completed my thesis for my master's program on this very topic on hobbies and adventures. So basically, it was nearly 50 pages of research on why all of this matters for women specifically. So, so there's science that backs this up, my friends, because we are literally losing an essential part of ourselves by not pursuing activities that light us up. Okay. We can be the very best version of ourselves if we allow ourselves the indulgence of finding an activity that lights us up internally and then we pursue it. And I am not telling you guys to quit your job and run away from your family and, you know, just do pottery all day. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm trying to say is that to truly flourish in the way that you should, that you deserve to, you this is an area of life that's really important to focus on. And I think that we have really forgotten about it. We are just so busy caregiving and doing all the all the output, all the productivity and an outward posture that we've completely forgotten this area that has such profound impact really for our well-being. So let me start with why hobbies and pastimes matter. Because the research here is genuinely stunning. Research links hobbies to greater life satisfaction, stronger social bonds, and a number of measurable health benefits. Studies of older adults have consistently found strong correlations between engagement and pastimes and longevity and quality of life. So not just happiness, not just positive emotions and feelings, the literal length of your life, okay, and all-cause mortality, which is basically dying for like all of the reasons sicknesses, accidents, suicide. I mean, it's kind of crazy. So if I told you that there was like a pill you could take, like a supplement, I'm really into supplements these days because I'm turning 46 and it's all the rage in my perimenopausal life, all the supplements. If there was a supplement that could reduce my stress, give me better health outcomes, give me a stronger sense of self, greater life satisfaction, and a lot, like literally a longer life. Yes, ma'am, I would take that. I would take it immediately and I would order two or three. So this is what I'm telling you about hobbies. It's a supplement you should be taking. It's free, and it's actually, you guys, enjoyable. So when you engage in leisure activities where you've chosen the activity for yourself intrinsically, right? This is intrinsically motivated, and you're pursuing it with a growing interest, curiosity, and skill, maybe you're improving your skills. So you're you're activating nearly every single marker of well-being that psychological researchers have identified as essential to flourishing. If you guys remember from earlier in the season, we talked about the five dimensions of well-being, PERMA, that's the acronym. And if you haven't listened to that episode, I highly recommend it. It gives you basically a breakdown of these five dimensions of what we need to flourish in life. Positive emotions was the first one, P. And yeah, when you do watercolor, you know, you feel relaxed and peaceful and happy. It brings you joy, maybe serenity, right? Pride, curiosity, delight, whatever it is. Maybe watercolor makes you angry. Then don't do watercolor. But these positive emotions, whatever it is that you're doing, they actually expand. And again, this is science, you guys. I'm not making this up. They expand your cognitive and emotional resources over time. There's a researcher and scholar named Barb Fredericks out of the University of North Carolina, and this is all she researches, which is a pretty cool job when you think about it, to study positive emotions. And positive emotions create upward spirals of more positive emotions and definitely impacts in a positive way your well-being. When you are taking a horseback riding lesson, for example, we'll pivot. You get into the flow when you start doing the thing well. So that's E for engagement. That's the flow that you where you lose yourself when a skill and a challenge is equally met, right? That's flow when you're losing a sense of time. You're just so in it. That's horseback riding. I'm just making that up. That's reading a book. Oh my gosh, you lose yourself. It's called narrative transportation. You're kind of in the flow there. The next one is R for relationships. And relationships are formed, you guys, like in so many ways and hobbies, right? When you are in a Mahjong league or you're playing tennis, you need other people to play with you, right? So that's community. And we know how vital community is. I think, especially a couple of years after COVID. This is something we know inherently. We lived it. The next one is meaning. And meaning, of course, is identifying with something bigger than yourself, but identity plays a role there. You know, I'm not just a mom of three beautiful, amazing daughters or a wife to an awesome dude. I'm I'm also me. I'm my own person who has my own unique interests and sense of humor and personality and things I like and don't like. And if you don't understand what I'm getting at here, that's amazing. But I, but I know so many women who have really felt like they've lost themselves inside the caregiving role more times, like more times than I can count. I've encountered women like that. And if you guys remember from earlier in the season, you guys know I have so many metaphors that I adore. The houseplant and the empty bowl of strawberries, those are my metaphors for losing myself. It was constant output. I was like a numb fern. I didn't even know who I was anymore. So this is why hobbies and pastimes are important. You begin to form an identity when you first start reflecting on like who am I actually? What do I like? What do I enjoy doing? And then you start to do it. And that's something that researchers call it's a term of art, self-concordance. You're aligning your activities with your goals and your values. And then finally, there's achievement. You guys, it really feels good to learn and accomplish something new. Am I right or am I right? Like to have done it feels good. I think in the middle, in the midst of doing it, there's, you know, self-challenge presents negative feelings. You're frustrated, maybe you're embarrassed. In the middle of the learning, it's hard and uncomfortable, but the challenge helps us grow. So we're gonna talk a lot about the incredible well-being benefits of self-challenge in some of the next episodes, specifically about adventures. Now, I want to spend a minute on a very specific category of hobbies that are particularly powerful simply because of the bucket they fall into. And that's the humanities bucket. When you think about what people actually pursue when they're free to choose, so much of it falls in here. So that's the visual arts, music, dance, theater, literature, philosophy, creating these things as well as consuming them. So the humanities are, by their nature, a mechanism for psychological richness. Do you remember we talked about this third dimension of the good life that is exciting and interesting, and you're following your curiosity, and it's also shifting your perspective. And the humanities are like a phenomenal way to get a perspective shift. You're genuinely seeing the world differently, um, experiencing life through a different lens. And it's one of the most powerful catalysts for richness, this distinct dimension of a life well lived. And think about, you know, when you're when you're reading a book, you're getting immersed in that story, and your perspective certainly shifts by just kind of being in the in the shoes of the character. When you look at art, your perspective on so many things shifts. Music, you guys, like there, and again, there is there's research behind this. In fact, there's a phenomenal book that I highly recommend called The Art Cure by a professor in England named Daisy Fancourt. And it's all about how the arts specifically impact well-being. So hobbies overlap with the humanities so much. So if hobbies are so powerful, which they are, why aren't women engaging in them more? Women are unable to pursue hobbies in the same way as men can. And that's just the honest truth. We talked about this in the last episode, where we talked about time constraints, time scarcity, the second shift of caregiving, the ethic of care, where we feel like we have to take care of people, and then the productivity imperative, where basically we don't feel like we deserve leisure, and this is subconscious often, because every hour of our day, we feel like we need to fill it with productivity. So these aren't excuses, these are actual structural and systemic realities that shape what's possible for us as women. And here's what's happening as a result women either aren't pursuing hobbies at all, or they're pursuing a compromised, kind of janky version of them, like family-oriented activities that masquerade as personal leisure. We talked about this in the last episode, like walking your dog with your kids, not a hobby. Or they're doing extrinsically motivated activities, maybe exercise done like purely for appearance or physical health goals that maybe you secretly hate. Like you think of them as a hobby, but they're not, right? Because the woman wouldn't engage in them if she could get the benefits without the experience. It's about the experience. And this matters because the well-being benefits of pastimes, like all the things we talked about before, come specifically from, in part, the intrinsic motivation aspect of them, from doing something purely because it delights you and challenges you and sparks something alive in you. Not because you're doing the game night because the annoying neighbors have been pressuring you, right? That's that's not it. The moment you're doing it for what it produces rather than what it is, those benefits are really beginning to erode. Another thing to consider, and I think this happens a lot with women who are super busy, they're confusing interests with pastimes and hobbies. So, like scrolling through interior design accounts on Instagram or TikTok for an hour. It's like not a hobby. It's an interest. It is a type of leisure activity. It's called casual leisure, scrolling on your phone or watching a Netflix show, but it's not going to give you all those benefits. The result, and this is where I need your help, you guys, the result is that the word hobby has lost all of its meaning. It gets conflated with fitness routines, family activities, doom scrolling, and all the genuine well-being benefits are getting lost because the activities that women are thinking are hobbies often aren't even functioning in that way. So I want to reclaim that word or alternatively offer a different standard for women specifically. Okay. So I am calling hobbies in their truest forms, soulful pursuits. And I know I'm working on the word. You guys give me, give me some thoughts in the comments. Shoot me, shoot me a DM on Instagram, please, if you have better ideas. But then also like Google things because everything is taken. There are like no original phrases anymore. I digress. I'm calling it for now a soulful pursuit. And I just, I told you I just finished my thesis on this topic and I included this terminology in it. So soulful pursuit. So first, it requires four criteria. Number one is that it requires action. Okay. Like we said, you are not just interested in a subject, you are doing actually doing something with the interest. The woman who is fascinated by birds is not just like following the TikTok account and the Instagram account on birds. She has a bird book. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see that I'm holding up a bird book with all of my little tabs here, which is simultaneously mortifying, and I'm very proud of myself for also get over the cringe. That's another thing I feel that we need to talk about. If you're truly curious in something, just pursue it. Literally, who cares? So the first requirement is action. The woman who wants to get into birds is not just thinking about birds. She's actually getting a bird book. She's buying a journal to sketch them. And then these are not really big, huge actions, right, you guys? She's she's going out with binoculars in the morning. These are small, quiet actions, and it's taking something that's an interest and transforming it into a soulful pursuit. The second one we talked about, it's intrinsically motivated. You're doing this because you want to. It delights you, it's interesting, it's exciting, it's challenging you or spark something alive in you. Not because you're annoying neighbors. I don't, I have lovely neighbors. I don't even know why I keep on calling this made-up neighbor annoying. But theoretically, if you had neighbors that were constantly pressuring you to have like a game night or something, you know, that wouldn't work inside this definition. You're doing it because you want to do it, not because it makes you a better employee or partner or mother, you're doing it because it's yours. The third requirement is that you are not financially dependent on it. And I think this is an important one. Sometimes, you know, if you become really good at something, like say you start chess and you become really good at chess, and what once was this phenomenal, fulfilling pastime, all of a sudden you start doing tournaments and it has suddenly lost its enjoyment in a lot of ways. That's where if you're becoming financially dependent on it, it can have a similar, a similar result, right? Where it's flirting dangerously with that productivity imperative. It's almost like work. So that's not to say that a woman who is knitting and quilting or something like that can't sell her stuff on Etsy. It's really when your financial stability depends on it that knitting or quilting stops being a soulful pursuit and kind of tiptoes into that work or productivity area. The fourth requirement is that it provides at least a modicum of psychological richness. It introduces variety, it sparks curiosity, it's pulling you out of your routine. And that's important, right? Because this time of life, especially if you're high achieving, you've got a family, if you've got a job, if you've got all the things, the monotony can get you. So it pulls you out of your routine, it's different, and it also shifts your perspective. Okay. And for a soulful pursuit for this kind of hobby, you know, it can be slightly psychologically rich, right? The bar here is not high. A soulful pursuit doesn't have to be exotic or expensive or impressive. And that's really important, you guys. You know, I pursued mahjong. You could also garden. So there are a lot of things that are kind of quiet actions that really provide psychological richness. So these are soulful pursuits and they are pathways to a different relationship with yourself and with time. And I also want to talk about identity because I think this dimension is really underemphasized. Women in midlife find themselves, I think, really defining themselves by the roles they inhabit. I'm a mom, I'm a wife, I'm an accountant, I'm a CFO. These roles are meaningful, and I'm not dismissing them. I mean, my role as a mother is the most important role of my life. I love it. But when I lose myself in that role, I'm not going to be able to be the person I was created to be. You know, I'm a person of faith. For me, it really, it really comes down to who was I created to be. Like I have all these gifts and all these interests and all these curiosities. And to really flourish, to really blossom into my true self, it's important not to lose myself in the other roles that I have in my life, to remember to look inward at who I am. But for many women, especially in the thick of midlife responsibilities, that self that exists apart from those roles has gotten like really quiet. Research on leisure and identity formation shows us that engaging in leisure activities, especially ones like soulful pursuits, hobbies actually done right, and especially ones that, again, are like novel and challenging, you know, these create space. For us to experiment with different facets of ourself, to discover new interests, new capacities, new ways of being in the world. I think this is really important for women who are empty nesting or at least have a little more bandwidth. I mean, that's a time in life where you really are trying to find out who you are because those other roles are getting smaller. So it's really interesting. And there's been a lot of research on adolescence and pastimes and leisure activities and how that factors into identity. And then, of course, there's so much about older adults and hobbies and pastimes. And with the young ones, of course, we kind of know when teenage kids or adolescent kids are experimenting with different sports and different activities. Like I'm a theater kid, I'm an athlete, that kind of thing. It really helps them with identity. I think that we are really similar, honestly, women in midlife and these adolescent populations, really similar in many ways in terms of seeking out an identity for ourselves. So those studies, I think, are actually quite relevant to women in midlife. And a lot of us aren't looking to reconnect necessarily with who we were at, you know, for me at 36. I want to meet and get to know this new woman I am at 46. Like, much love to Jackie at 36, really, much love. But I'm really interested in getting to know myself now. And I'm asking a different question. Who am I now? Especially for women that are navigating transitions. Like I said, the empty nesters, children leaving the house, or shifting careers. You know, that's what I interact with a lot of women through my women's network, Juno. And that's really focused on professional transitions or gaining momentum professionally. You know, those transitional periods are really important for that identity formation. So soulful pursuits, again, I'm open to suggestions on the name. These are hobbies in their truest form. They don't just give us something different to do on a Tuesday night, for example. They give us a new answer to the question that I just posed, like, who am I now? And, you know, it can be: I'm a I'm a painter, I'm a birder, I'm not just a mom, right? I'm a woman who is learning to play piano at 52. I am the kind of person who reads voraciously and has strong opinions about X, Y, Z. This is not a trivial thing. This is identity and this is selfhood. And I think in a lot of ways, it's a form of resistance against a culture that wants to define us entirely by what we produce and by who we care for. So I want to leave you today with something practical. I want you to think about one thing you've been curious about, genuinely curious. And a lot of times I have women with with whom I work, they'll try to reconnect with their younger selves, you know, like what did 14-year-old Jackie like to do? And I talked about this in in, I think with the first or a second episode, but you really can find out a lot about yourself by what you enjoy doing around adolescence. So maybe think about that if you're if you're really drawing a blank. Think about something you've been curious about. And then ask yourself, what would the smallest possible action look like towards that? Not a not a commitment or a class. You don't need to do that unless you want to, but one tiny low-stakes action in the direction of that curiosity. So buying the book, taking one walk with like the intention of noticing the gorgeous birdies that are up in the air and then in the trees. Did I tell you guys that I had three barred owls in my backyard last week? It was the most incredible thing ever. I digress. If you take one step in the direction towards that thing, that would be a win. You know, get the journal. Look up the community theaters in your neighborhood. Just look them up just to see where they are and and and when the auditions might be. That's it. That's where the soulful pursuits, these hobbies in their truest forms, that's where these begin, with one small action in the direction of something that's gonna light you up. Because you deserve a life that does light you up. So thank you guys so much for being here today. This is such a fun conversation, and I welcome your comments. Please reach out to me on Instagram with any thoughts or anything you'd like me to talk about. And over the next few episodes, we're gonna talk about adventures, kind of grand adventures, and what I'm calling everyday adventures. And we're also gonna dip our toe into the water of real life women, historical and like ones that are alive now on the earth that are exemplars of getting a life. So that's gonna be really fun. I'm excited for those episodes. All right, guys, have a great day, and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. If you enjoyed the episode, do me a favor and follow the show, drop a rating or a review, and take a moment, seriously, just one second right now, to think of a friend who would appreciate it and share it with them. That's how we keep the conversation going. See you next time.