Zest

by

Definition

VIA: Zest means approaching a situation, or life in general, with excitement and energy, not approaching tasks or activities halfway or halfheartedly. People who are high in zest are excited to get up in the morning, and they live their lives like an adventure. It’s one of four strengths in the virtue category of Courage, alongside bravery, honesty, and perseverance.

Wikipedia: In positive psychology, zest (or enthusiasm) is among the discrete strengths people possess. Having zest means treating life as an adventure and feeling motivated in challenging situations, displaying enthusiasm, excitement, and energy as you tackle life’s tasks.

Cambridge Dictionary: Enthusiasm, eagerness, energy, and interest — as in “she’s over 80, but she still has an amazing zest for life.”

Here’s the thing about zest: it’s not the same as being loud, hyper, or “extra.” You can be quiet and still have zest — it’s about how fully you show up, not how much noise you make. A person with zest doesn’t necessarily talk the most in a room, but when they do something, they do it wholeheartedly instead of dragging their feet.

Zest is also one of the strengths most strongly linked to happiness and life satisfaction — research consistently ranks it right up there with hope, gratitude, curiosity, and love. That’s a big deal, because it means zest isn’t just a personality quirk. It’s something you can build, and building it pays off.

A common misconception is that zest is something you either have or don’t — that some people are just “born enthusiastic” and everyone else is stuck watching from the sidelines. That’s not true. Zest is closely tied to physical energy, sleep, movement, and how connected you feel to what you’re doing, which means it responds to how you treat your body and how you spend your time. Change those things, and your zest changes too.

Examples and Case Studies

Theodore Roosevelt turned a sickly, asthmatic childhood into a legendary life of “the strenuous life” — boxing in the White House, exploring the Amazon, and famously saying it was better to dare mighty things than live in the “gray twilight” of playing it safe.

Amelia Earhart treated flying, and life itself, as one long experiment in daring. She didn’t just want to survive her era’s limits on women — she wanted to feel the full thrill of pushing past them, calling adventure “worthwhile in itself.”

Michael Jordan‘s relentless, all-in approach to basketball — practicing harder than anyone, refusing to phone it in even in meaningless games — is often used as a go-to example of zest in youth character-education programs.

The Dalai Lama is frequently cited by researchers as someone who personifies zest: someone who greets each day, and each person, with visible warmth and energy rather than going through the motions.

A teenager training for a first 5K who wakes up excited to run instead of dreading it is showing zest in a small, everyday way — the same spark, just at a different scale than Roosevelt’s expeditions.

Suggested Track

If you’re building a “zest track” for yourself or mentoring someone else, there are two useful approaches, and you don’t have to pick just one.

The first is the energy-first approach: since zest is so closely tied to physical vitality, start with sleep, movement, and nutrition. A month of consistent sleep and daily movement — even short walks — tends to produce a noticeable shift in how excited someone feels about their day. This approach suits people who feel flat or tired more than unmotivated.

The second is the meaning-first approach: zest shows up strongest when you feel your activities matter. This track involves identifying one thing you’re currently doing “halfheartedly” and asking why — then either reconnecting it to something you care about, or being honest that it’s not worth your energy and finding something that is. This suits people who have the energy but feel bored or disengaged.

A strong program often blends both: build the physical foundation, then point that energy at something that genuinely matters to the person doing it.

Literature, Art and Media

Books:

  • The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt — a firsthand account of turning a fragile childhood into a life lived at full throttle, told with the same restless energy Roosevelt was famous for.
  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho — a short, widely-loved novel about a young shepherd who chooses the adventure of pursuing his dream over the safety of staying put.
  • Wild by Cheryl Strayed — a memoir of hiking over a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone, and rediscovering the will to fully engage with life along the way.
  • Teen Innovators by Fred Estes — profiles of real teenagers (like Gitanjali Rao and William Kamkwamba) whose curiosity and drive led them to build real inventions, showing zest in action at exactly this age.

Visual Art:

  • The Dance (1910) by Henri Matisse — five figures caught mid-motion in a circular dance, painted with just three bold colors to capture pure, unfiltered energy and joy.

Podcasts:

  • Zestology, hosted by Tony Wrighton — conversations with scientists, authors, and experts about building more energy, vitality, and motivation into everyday life.

TED Lectures:

Movies:

  • Into the Wild (2007) — the true story of Christopher McCandless, who walked away from a conventional future to live life as an all-in adventure; a powerful (and cautionary) look at what zest can drive someone to do.
  • Wild (2014) — Reese Witherspoon plays Cheryl Strayed, who rebuilds her sense of aliveness by hiking the Pacific Crest Trail solo, proving zest can be rebuilt after loss.
  • Dead Poets Society (1989) — an English teacher’s infectious enthusiasm for poetry and “seizing the day” pushes a group of students to engage with their own lives more fully.

Mentors

To be completed by program coordinator.

Events

City2Surf (Sydney) — the world’s largest fun run, where 80,000+ people of every fitness level walk, jog, or sprint 14km from the CBD to Bondi Beach, turning a Sunday morning into a city-wide celebration of showing up and moving.

parkrun (locations across Australia and worldwide) — free, weekly 5km community runs/walks held every Saturday morning, built entirely around the idea that showing up regularly, with energy, matters more than how fast you go.

Wanderlust 108 — a “mindful triathlon” combining a 5km run, a DJ-powered yoga session, and guided meditation, designed to leave participants feeling activated rather than drained.

Places

The Blue Mountains, NSW — dramatic clifftop walks and lookouts that reward early starts and full-body effort with views that make the effort obviously worth it.

Whitehaven Beach, Queensland — its blindingly white sand and swirling turquoise water is the kind of place that tends to shake people out of autopilot and back into paying full attention to being alive.

The Great Ocean Road, Victoria — a coastal road trip built for stopping constantly to swim, hike, or just stand somewhere spectacular, rather than rushing through.

Experiences

Sign up for something with a start date and a finish line — a fun run, an ocean swim, a hike with a summit — so your zest has a clear target to build toward.

Try a new physical activity you’ve never done, purely because it looks fun, with zero pressure to be good at it. Rock climbing, surfing lessons, a dance class — the novelty itself tends to spark energy.

Spend one full day doing only things you’ve chosen because they excite you (within reason!) and notice how different that feels from a normal day on autopilot.

Volunteer for something physical and social at the same time — like a beach clean-up or a community garden day — since zest often shows up strongest when energy and connection combine.

Keep an “aliveness log” for a week: jot down the moments each day when you felt most switched-on and engaged, then look for the pattern.

Challenges

The 24-Hour Full-Throttle Challenge
  • Pick one ordinary day — a school day is perfect, it doesn’t need to be a weekend.
  • For that whole day, commit to doing everything at 100% instead of halfway: eat breakfast like you actually taste it, do your homework with full focus instead of half-watching your phone, greet people properly instead of a mumbled “hey.”
  • At the end of the day, write down three moments where going “full throttle” changed how something felt compared to a normal day.
The Energy Audit
  • For three days, rate your energy level (1–10) four times a day: morning, after school/work, evening, and before bed.
  • Next to each rating, jot down what you’d just been doing.
  • Look for patterns: what consistently drains you, and what consistently lifts you? Pick one draining thing to change and one lifting thing to do more of next week.
The Adventure Jar
  • Write down 15 small “adventures” you could realistically do in the next month — nothing expensive or dangerous, just things that feel a little new (try a food you’ve never had, take a different route home, strike up a conversation with someone you don’t know well).
  • Put them in a jar and pull one out each week.
  • After each one, note how it felt to do something slightly outside your normal groove.

Leave a Comment