No Talent Necessary
All too often, people sell themselves short. We have a tendency to put these mental blocks in our minds, limits on our potential. A conversation I had with someone recently involved me telling them about my training program. Their reaction went something along the lines of “Wow. How do you do that? I could never do that”. That’s a lie and example of putting a mental block in place. You and I are both humans. I myself am extremely unremarkable. If I can do it, you could do it.
Cliché time: You can accomplish anything you set your mind to.
“How do you get up at 5am and train for two hours?”
First thing I do is set my alarm for 5am. Then I get up when it goes off. Then, shortly after, I start training. After two hours of training, I stop. In isolation they are pretty simple tasks. In practice, they are also pretty simple tasks. Now, admittedly a totally untrained person may not have the fitness levels to train for that long but that comes quickly as your body adapts — maybe start with forty minutes and work your way up. The other tasks though, literally anyone can do. Anyone can set an alarm for a certain time. Anyone can physically get out of bed — these are both things most of use do every day. Why do we place limits on our capability to do that? Why could we “never do that”?
You couldn’t “never do that” you just don’t want to — be honest with yourself, that’s important. If you don’t want to, that is absolutely fine. It’s the wanting to do something and not doing anything about it is what I have an issue with. What a waste of ambition. I want to do all those things above. I want to spend each day chasing goals and trying to improve certain aspects of my life. That’s why I try to live my life the way I do.
It might sound like an audacious claim at the moment but I could run a marathon in under three hours. It would take several years of intense training — a type of training which I do not particularly enjoy, enormous changes to my body composition and to my lifestyle but I could do it. So could you. What is stopping me? For the reasons I’ve mentioned above, I have zero interest in pursuing this particular goal. There are other goals in life (physical, personal and professional) that do interest me and I work towards them every day.
Things like this, running a marathon etc. — there is no ‘talent’ necessary for this, even ability is not a pre-requisite to start of the path. The main entry requirement for this, like almost every goal, is work ethic. We all have a work ethic, so we are all eligible. How much you tap into your work ethic is a personal choice.
You could do this too. If something like this is your goal, what is stopping you? It’s not talent. It is certainly not ability. You could do it. If someone else can do it and it is within the limits of human capability, you can do it if you work for it.
All of us start this life from the same point. We come into this world a 7–10 lbs ball of screaming chaos, incapable of doing pretty much anything. None of us have any talents or extraordinary abilities at this stage. No one is born a good footballer. There are no savvy businessmen or women at the age of zero days. No one is blessed with charisma and leadership qualities required of a CEO from birth. All of these things are consequences of work we put in from that point on. None of us are born gifted.
I titled this article No Talent Necessary but truth be told, I really don’t like the word talent. Talent itself does not exist. Ability or proficiency in something is earned through continuous hard work over periods of time. There’s no other way. Natural talent is a myth and, in my opinion, is used primarily for two purposes:
1. To essentially take credit for people’s hard work done behind the scenes in order to obtain proficiency in something. “She doesn’t even need to practice, she’s so talented”. No, she’s practiced all her life and mastered her craft. You just don’t see that part. Practice something two hours a day for three months and you might find yourself suddenly more ‘talented’ than you were before.
2. To make ourselves feel better about being crap at something we don’t practice. Other people are just “talented”, I don’t have the talent etc. Bullshit. Work at it. Give it a try.
No one has any talent, some people just work harder.
