Find Your Passion Vs. Develop Your Passion

This article looks at the different mindsets that people have about their talents and abilities, and at how the way we approach our interests influences our actual pursuit of them. 

Stanford scholars examined "beliefs that may lead people to succeed or fail at developing their interests" and found that we either take on our passions and interests with a growth mindset (i.e. you need to invest time and effort to develop them) or with a fixed one (interests are qualities that you are born with, low-hanging fruit just waiting to be discovered). Through an experiment that involved two groups of Stanford students — one interested in technology, the other in arts and humanities — the scholars found that those with a fixed mindset are less open to read an article outside their area of interest.

Having a fixed mindset can impede your developing in your own area of interest. Other students were shown a video about black holes and the origin of the universe. Everybody got excited. But they then had to read a challenging scientific article about the matter. At that point, the greatest drop in excitement was among the students with a fixed mindset.

“Difficulty may have signaled that it was not their interest after all,” the researchers wrote. “Taken together, those endorsing a growth theory may have more realistic beliefs about the pursuit of interests, which may help them sustain engagement as material becomes more complex and challenging.”