Is hard work more important than talent?
At some point in your life, someone has said this to you:
Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.
Your Dad/Mum
It’s a statement you probably started hearing the first time you played for a sports team that wasn’t the best, or you didn’t win a medal at the athletics carnival, or you failed a math test.
If you’ve never heard that saying, you need this post even more!
Today’s post is a little different… it’s Uncle Nathan’s first GUEST POST!
The writing style may seem different to what you’re used to reading, which I’m sure will be refreshing! I’d never post something that I don’t fully agree with either, so you can read this as if it were my exact opinion…
Today’s blog post was written by Jordy Langdon, a long-time friend of mine who has recently discovered his passion, and learnt what it’ll take to achieve his dreams.
It’s safe to assume the words you’re about to read have come from a man who absolutely preaches what he praises! Enjoy…
Table of Contents
Praising Effort Over Ability
We often look at people with a natural ability for certain things, as “gifted” or “talented.”
These people are frequently praised for their tendency to pick up things and perform well with a perception of little effort. We often think we are born with a capacity and not a base. Often we hold people with “talent” or a “gift” in higher esteem than ones with a strong work ethic.
This is a curse in disguise.
Naturally talented or gifted individuals grow up hearing things like, “you have so much potential.” So already, these people, without even achieving this potential, have pressure to fulfil these expectations. This expectation can lead to a fear of failure because they don’t know how to cope with someone questioning whether their natural ability will be enough. They have not learned to deal with failure as they believe failure is negative.
This fixed mindset creates a great amount of pressure and a false sense of what failure is.
What’s Wrong With Me?
I am a victim of this fixed mindset.
I was the talented kid with lots of potential, but I eventually reached a level where my natural talent was matched with those who worked hard for it. So, I competed against people who may have been less talented in
the beginning but had a consistently strong work ethic. Their resilience was much stronger than mine.
Eventually, I gave up. I lost confidence and turned away opportunities because I was worried about my reputation
and thought it defined me as a person. The individuals who worked hard made it much further than I did because they not only had the ability, but, they had the mindset of what it took to succeed. They were exposed to micro-failures and viewed them as ways to learn.
Fixed or Growth Mindset – Which are You?
Whilst naturally gifted people were growing up being praised for their potential or success, the other group of kids watched and compared themselves. We are born with a base, some of us are smarter than others, some of us are faster. Our experiences growing up determine whether we have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.
The main difference between the two mindsets is that the fixed mindset group are scared to fail while the growth mindset group thrives on failure.
The growth mindset group sees their failures as challenges and are persistent with their efforts to learn from them. While the fixed mindset group shy away from challenges that could question their ability, or expose them to the fear of failure.
Dr Carol S. Dweck talks about this in her book ‘Mindset.’ Dweck’s experiments with kids at school where she praises students who are succeeding, on their ability and praises the students who were struggling with their efforts. Eventually, the struggling students excel as they enjoy the challenges and their mistakes, considering them part of the learning process. Whereas the perceived “talented” and “gifted”‘ students plateaued or plummeted as they turned downed challenges that questioned their ability.
Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
As social beings, we compare ourselves to others to get an idea of where we are at. More often than not, we look at sports stars or people’s lives on social media and compare that to our own lives.
The problem with this is that we are comparing everything that is going on in our life to other people’s highlight reels.
Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest soccer player of all time, is advertised as being a ‘God’ and is
the north star for many people across the globe. What we fail to look at is how many times he failed and what he put himself through to get to the top.
It’s funny to think that one of the greatest sporting athletes of all time was told he was never going to make it. Based on Messi’s upbringing in Argentina, his experiences shaped his mindset into not letting other people decide his journey.
Many elite people in this world obsess over mindset, they are all workhorses who stop at nothing
to achieve their goals. It is the most important factor in achieving any goal.
To succeed, there are many obstacles and setbacks in everyone’s journey. Having natural ability is a good starting point but it means nothing if you crumble when facing obstacles. This is all based on your mindset, what is stopping you from taking on those challenges? In other words, what is stopping you from developing?
Sounds stupid when you take a step back and really look at it. It is as easy as looking at a failure and seeing
you have learnt something out of it.
The Takeaway
Learn to love a challenge, because your only two outcomes are:
- You succeed and reach a new milestone; OR
- You fail and learn something you didn’t know before.
It is hard when you see people posting photos on yachts or going out to a nice lunch. It paints a picture of what their life is like. Right? Well, not necessarily.
More often than not, that person posting photos on yachts or going on trips could be 20k in credit card debt or be lost not knowing what to do with their life.
People only let you see their best, especially on social media. Stop comparing your life to other people’s best parts. Swap “I’ll never” with “I will.” Take on that challenge, push yourself, stay out of your comfort zone and do not give up. Giving up is the only time you really fail.
And that, right there, is the essence of mindset. A dedicated vision of failure as ‘learning’ rather than failure as ‘defeat’.
Get it right, focus on what’s next and how you’ll improve by then. Your base is no where near as influential as you think when it comes to success.
Remember:
Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard…
For more:
Until next time,
Uncle N. (and Jordy)