People who feel and express sincere and spontaneous joy at the thought of accomplishing a mission or task are more likely to excel in their field.
- Maintaining a passion for an activity allows you not to lose your motivation with age and to remain active.
What is the secret of success? This is the question raised by Norwegian and Icelandic researchers. To answer this, they made a study recently published in the journal New Ideas in Psychology. For the purposes of the work, the scientists recruited 25 professional football players, aged around 22, and 21 semi-professional players, whose average age was 14 years old.
Three factors studied
The authors’ goal was to examine whether passion, courage and mindset differed between the various skill levels in the two football teams and to determine whether these personality traits impacted their success. For this, they asked all the participants to answer a questionnaire on their passion, their courage and their state of mind.
In addition, the coaches of each team ranked the football skills of the players based on their own knowledge. Next, the researchers compared, in the older age group, the top eight performers to the bottom eight performers. In the younger group, the scientists compared the seven highest-ranked and the seven lowest-ranked players.
Two teams
According to the results, in both teams, the higher performing players were more passionate than the lower ranked participants. According to the authors, this study shows the important role of passion in becoming a good football player.
“For people who are the best in their field, passion is the biggest factor. It is the essential key to success”, said Hermundur Sigmundsson, author of the research, in a statement. According to scientists, courage and a positive mindset can also help us go far on the path to excellence.
