What if your childhood interests reveal who you're meant to become?

All roads eventually lead back to the interests you had as a child. And let me explain what I mean. When I first came across this idea, I realized how strangely true it was for so many of my friends at Cambridge. And as a scientist, I naturally wanted to know if there was actually any evidence behind it. Study followed on 1.2k people for 37 years and found that the activities they gravitated towards when they were young predicted similar interests decades later. And once you notice it, you see it everywhere. As Virgil Abloh, a designer who literally melded his designs to Nike, and decades later, he actually designed for them. And Johnny Ives spent his childhood drawing, making things. His silversmith father would actually take him to workshops where they built everything from furniture to go-karts together. And that obsession with making him eventually led him to design the iPhone. And Kelly Wearstler grew up going to flea markets and vintage stores with her mother and grandmother, constantly creating and collecting things. She says that she didn't realize it then, but she was educating and, Julia Cameron calls this idea creative recovery in the book The Artist's Way, which I highly recommend. Creativity isn't always something we need to acquire. Sometimes it's something we uncover again after years of expectations and self-consciousness have buried it. Because as children, we didn't need our interests to be productive or impressive or even to make sense to anyone. Curiosity was reason enough. So maybe part of growing up is giving yourself permission to become childlike again, to revisit the things you once loved and follow an interest simply because it fascinates you. Because when you strip away the world expects you to be, you might rediscover what actually ignites your creativity and makes you, you. To be yourself in a world that's constantly trying to make you something else, I think is one of life's greatest accomplishments.