It's All Up To You...Well, Almost

If you're like me, you will agree that sometimes it can feel really good to be able to say: "Well, I guess I'm just not talented at that. That's why I'm not good at it and there's nothing I can do about it."
That way you are relieved of any pressure to perform in a certain area and can move on with your life, concentrating on those things that come easy to you, i.e. the ones you're talented at. Have you ever thought that way? I know I have...

In his book The Genius In All Of Us, David Shenk explains why we like this thought process so much:

"A belief in inborn gifts and limits is much gentler on the psyche. The reason you aren't a great opera singer is because you can't be one. That's simply the way you were wired. Thinking of talent as innate makes our world more manageable, more comfortable. It relieves a person of the burden of expectation." (p. 99)

The only problem with this notion is that it's not true - at least not entirely. As I've already mentioned in previous posts, talent is not something you either have or don't have, but more so the process of working hard to get better at something. The reason people like Jerry Rice and Michael Jordan became such great athletes is because they had a fierce determination be the best at what they did. So can we then say that what we are and what we can become is completely up to us and under our control? Well, not quite:

"Nothing in this book, therefore, is meant to suggest that any of us have complete control over our lives or abilities - or that we are anything close to a blank slate. Rather, our task now is to replace the simplistic notions of 'giftedness' and 'nature/nurture' with a new landscape: a vast array of influences, many of which are largely out of our control but some of which we can hope to influence as we increase our understanding.
This is a difficult notion and must be allowed to sink in gently. The strong temptation will always be to revert back to the nature/nurture paradigm: if it's not nature, it must be nurture. If it's not genes, it must be environment. If it's not DNA, it must be parenting. But these either/or dichotomies are as misleading as saying that if a person isn't white he must be black. We cannot allow ourselves to think that way anymore." (p. 100)

Wow, no black-and-white-thinkers anymore? Almost sounds like heaven! ;-) But I digress... where was I again? Oh yes, how much control we have over our lives and abilities. Now even though there are numerous things that we cannot influence, but that nonetheless affect us, the good news is there's still plenty left that is (mostly) under our control. In the chapter entitled How To Be A Genius (Or Merely Great), Shenk identifies 7 principles that should serve as a guide for the ambitious:

1. Find your motivation.
2. Be your own toughest critic.
3. Beware the dark side (bitterness and blame).
4. Identify your limitations - and then ignore them.
5. Delay gratification and resist contentedness.
6. Have heroes.
7. Find a mentor.

I didn't go into detail on any of the principles this time because they seem very self-explanatory to me. And if you're really interested in getting more information on the topic, you should probably go ahead and buy the book. 

To sum it all up, I personally think that's still a lot that we can have control over. And I really don't think we could ask for more than that...