The Passion Paradox: A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life

Some studies show that up to 40 percent of our personality may be inherited. Professor C. Robert Cloninger, a psychiatrist at Washington University’s School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, recently developed a system for evaluating the heritable part of personality, referred to as temperament. His research suggests that there is a link between

A better approach to finding your passion is to lower the bar from perfect to interesting, then give yourself permission to pursue your interests with an open mind.

People with fit mind-sets for passion are also more likely to give up on new pursuits at the first sign of challenge or disappointment, shrugging their shoulders and thinking, I guess this isn’t for me. Furthermore, studies show that individuals with fit mind-sets actually expect their passions to dwindle over time, setting themselves up for midlif

Embracing exploration is so important because the path to finding your passion can be long and circuitous, with many wrong turns in the direction of activities, jobs, or other opportunities that initially appeared exhilarating yet proved to be something else. But have the courage to keep on exploring.

Competency is about having a sense of control over the outcome of your efforts and the ability to make progress over time. If you don’t believe that your efforts will be rewarded with improvement, why put forth any effort to begin with? If you don’t feel like you’re progressing in an activity—be it better performance, more enjoyment, or some other

couldn’t possibly do this” syndrome only grows stronger with age. It also creates a formidable sense of path dependency, or the narrative that you are on a certain path, and the best—if not only—option is to stay on it. But path dependency prevents you from exploring opportunities that could lead to a better and more fulfilling life. You’ll never k

In the early 1970s, psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan developed a concept called self-determination theory that forever changed how the scientific community viewed motivation. Deci and Ryan found that, contrary to common wisdom (both then and, to a large extent, now), one’s drive to pursue activities is not predominantly reliant on externa

Autonomy, also sometimes referred to as authenticity, is about acting in harmony with your innermost being. It means you’re connecting what you do with who you are. Your work should reflect your core values and beliefs; you should express some part of your innermost self in your activity. Unfortunately, in a modern economy that emphasizes external

We don’t get hooked on the feeling associated with achievement, we get hooked on the feeling associated with the chase. Dopamine is the molecule of desire and motivation. This simple yet powerful biological truth is responsible for some of history’s greatest achievements, from the survival of the human species yesterday to groundbreaking scientific