Natural Talent is Overrated, Don’t Believe in it

Natural talent’s importance is one of the most dangerous things that you can believe in. While talent does matter, no one is born straight out of the womb with number one talent in anything. Once you plant a seed, you need consistent effort in order for it to grow to something meaningful.

When we see exception talented individuals winning number one trophies all the time, all we see are their results. Therefore, we mistakenly believe that they were just born great and they didn’t put in a lot of effort and hours in order to get there. That’s the incorrect way to think.

We never see what goes on behind the scenes and all of the effort that they put in. It’s the most classic example of when our own eyes deceive us. When we see the winners up on the stage, we start to equate effort with it being “uncool”. Only the ones who need to try hard actually do try hard.

That’s not right. No matter what, anyone who wants to be great and the best at something needs to try hard. The ones who consistently put in the effort day in and day out over a long period of time always come out ahead. At the very top of the talent chain, what ultimately matters then is how the effort is put in.

However, in order to reach one of the top of the talent chain in the first place, you first need to put in a lot of hours. In terms of the sheer volume of the hours that you invest in. That’s why natural talent is overrated. It’s just not who wins in the end. You at first need to put in your dues to move forward.

What is Natural Talent?

Natural talent is an innate gift that is given to you at birth that allows you to achieve mastery of a skill without the need to put in many hours of practice. To put it simply, it’s a skill that you are “born with” and not something that you have to nurture in order to get to the top.

I’ll give you a secret. Not a single person in the world is born with natural talent. Everyone had to work at their craft in order to achieve mastery. Roger Federer did not know how to play tennis as soon as he was born. Magnus Carlsen didn’t know how to play chess as soon as he was born.

Warren Buffett didn’t know how to buy stocks as soon as he was born. It’s all learned and taught behavior. Yes, they may be better at learning the skills better than anyone else in the world. Some things just come intuitively to certain people. However, they still had to put in the time to learn in the first place.

For example, math always seemed to come very easily to me. Taking the differential of an equation wasn’t hard and doing mental math wasn’t hard as well. However, I wouldn’t even had known that until I found out what math problems existed in the first place. i still had to learn how to solve the problems in the first place.

Even your company’s CEO had to learn how to behave and act in the workplace before rising up the ranks. Unless he or she was a founder of the company, they at least took a decade to perfect their craft before rising up. A decade at a standard 40-hour workweek is 20,800 hours that they put in.

That’s a lot of hours.

Why is Natural Talent Overrated?

One of the reasons why natural talent is overrated is because you’re not DESTROYING that social share button and posting to your favorite social media! Your friends could be struggling with the concept as well and we need to correct their misconceptions.

Talent isn’t born. You nurture talent. If you could help your friends out with adjusting their mindset to the correct one just by sharing an article, why wouldn’t you? Let’s share the information so that their lives can be better as well!

So with that said, let’s go over the reasons why natural born abilities are overrated.

1) It’s Not an Indicator Of Success

Someone could be an absolute genius at investing. However, if they are not interested in the field, they are not going to successful at it. They’re not going to put in the hours to learn what makes a successful investor. That’s why natural talent is overrated. It’s not an indicator of success by any means of measurement.

There are other elements at play that are just as important to cross a person to the finish line. Without all of those variables working together, the progress machine is just not going to turn on. Don’t focus on what your talents are or what other people’s talents are.

Others could be talented in a completely random thing that ultimately doesn’t matter, anyway. Focus your time and attention on what things that you want to build and create. Then figure out a way to be excellent at it and better than anyone else you know. You will come out very ahead in this manner.

2) People Let Natural Talent Get In Their Head

The ones who think that they are naturally talented let it get to their head. For example, me. I used to think that I had natural talent and that I was very smart. I used to also think that I was special. I’m glad that I don’t think in such a way anymore. However, the point is that when I did, that’s when disaster struck.

That’s when I wouldn’t put in meaningful effort and just solely relied on my “smarts” to get by. The harsh realities of life knocked me down and I’m glad that they did. I don’t let pride get in the way anymore.

So many people with immense talent fail because they don’t control their own emotions. They let their emotions get the best of them and think that they deserve things. This is why natural talent is so overrated. The ones who have great talent can’t even control themselves in order to achieve success.

Emotional stability and management matters more.

3) It’s Only One Piece of the Puzzle

The popular saying is that hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. Effort is more meaningful than just simply having it within themselves. Remember the 10,000 hour rule. In order to be good at something, you need to devote some meaningful amount of time in order to get there.

Additionally, behavioral characteristics like the ability to practice delayed gratification matter as well. More studies are showing that being smart is helpful but it’s not really that important in order to achieve success. Look at your valedictorians from high school. Are they the ones who achieved the most success from your graduating class?

More than likely not. The ones who are good at school go on to become doctors, lawyers, and the like. However, they are never the ones who change the world. Even if they have a natural talent to be smart and in their IQ, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. They may just be the ones who follow the crowd and what everyone else is doing.

However, they may never be the ones who achieve massive success.

4) Every Skill in the World can be Nurtured

No matter what you want to do, you can get great at it. Whether it’s public speaking, investing, presentation, or starting a business, you can learn these skills. There is nothing in the world that is so complicated that you can’t learn how to do it. Natural talent is overrated because everything can be learned.

As long as you are willing to put in the time and effort. Most of the skills that people do are about repetition, anyway. It’s pure muscle memory. Things that you do once are engraved in your memory so much that the next time that you do it, it becomes easier.

Evaluate your current life today. Do you truly believe that you couldn’t have gotten here? Remember that two years ago led to your life today. All of the effort that you put in years ago. Can you honestly say that you couldn’t have learned everything you did to become who you are today?

I think not.

Instead of Natural Talent, Focus on These Things

So now that you know that natural talent isn’t a good thing to focus on, let’s get into the things to focus on.

1) Work Ethic

Don’t worry about the output, worry about your input. Why? Your effort is the only thing that you can truly control in life. You can’t control what others think about your work product, you can only influence it. Therefore, in order to get to the finish line and to greatness, focus on your work ethic.

I would call myself someone who worked their butt off to get to where they are today. I worked on marketable skills so that companies could hire me with a good salary out of college. There’s no innate ability or natural talent that I possess, just the ability to put in more hours than the next person.

Are you really willing to fail because of a lack of effort? Because you didn’t put in the necessary hours it takes to be successful? It would truly be embarrassing to fail because of a lack of effort. Trust me, I’ve failed before due to a lack of effort before. I look back at those moments and cringe at that.

Never again will I fail because I didn’t put in the hours it takes to get there.

2) Emotional Control

When you think too highly of yourself, it’s not going to attract others to you. It’s going to turn others off. They’re going to think that you are trying to communicate that you are better than them. Stop taking yourself so seriously. You need a healthy amount of ego to have self belief and confidence.

However, don’t let it ever go overboard. Whenever you see a company ad that says they “built an iconic brand,” they’re taking themselves way too seriously. The ones who shout the loudest have the least substance. They have a dying need to say how great they are because they think that’s the only way people will notice.

When the product is great, people will be more than willing to shell out their hard earned money for it. Therefore, if you know that you are a great product, you don’t need to flaunt it and let everyone know it. Practice emotional control. It’ll get you farther than any other natural talent will.

3) Progress and Improvement

The most important thing to focus on is absolute progress and improvement. Relative progress is how you are progressing when compared to others. Absolute progress is how you are progressing when compared to your past self. Absolute progress is what matters the most.

It doesn’t matter how you are doing against others as long as you are going at a pace that you are comfortable with. As long as you are making progress and are improving, then there’s no need to worry about if you have innate talent or not. You are already doing well, why ruin it by trying to overthink?

When you are constantly worried about other factors that doesn’t matter, then you start to muddy up your thoughts with non-value adding things. Don’t let that happen to you. It doesn’t matter if you’re moving forward slowly or quickly, what matters is that you are moving forward in the first place.

4) Intrinsic Motivation

The final thing to focus on is whether or not you actually want it. Are you working on something because your parents or your friends told you to? Or do you have intrinsic motivation to work on your craft and achieve mastery? There’s a vast amount of difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

You have to get out of bed for the right reasons. When others tell you to do something, that will gives you temporary motivation for you to get out of bed and finish whatever they told you to finish. However, when you want and have the desire to finish something, that gets you permanent motivation.

You want to focus on the long term and not the short term. Find out why you get out of bed in the morning to do the things you do. Don’t just live to exist, live to achieve self actualization. Natural talent becomes meaningless if there’s no passion or motivation to start the day in the first place.

Find your why and purpose. The two most important days in your life will be the day you are born and the day you find out why.

My Story with Natural Talent

I’m not naturally gifted by any means of measurement. I don’t have natural talent. All I have is the ability to put in the effort. I worked 20 hours per week every semester in college and every summer. I learned about ways to become wealthy through personal finance blogs.

That’s how I arrived at a $380k net worth by the time that I was only 26 years old. That is the top 1% wealth bucket for my age group. There’s nothing special that I did. All I did was practice delayed gratification, kept my expenses low, and did a good job at my job.

That landed me a six figure salary when I was only 23 years old. There’s nothing special that I did to get there, as well. I didn’t go above and beyond and create a new way of doing things. All I did was I did as I was told to my boss’s liking. That’s it. Nothing more and nothing less.

It turns out, that’s more than enough to get ahead in the workplace. I also didn’t invest in the next Tesla that generates outrageous returns. All I did was put my money into a broad market index fund like the S&P 500 and let that money sit there. Nothing more and nothing less.

I don’t know how to pick individual stocks, anyway. I have no natural talent yet I still ended up at the top 1% wealth bucket for my age group. There’s no doubt in my mind that you can get there as well even if you don’t have natural talent. Everyone can get there but even better news is that people don’t usually put in the work to get there.

That’s where you can be a diamond in the rough and outshine others.

Don’t Let the Natural Talent Myth Get in the Way

From a young age, parents are enamored and impressed by young kids who seem to have natural talent. As a result, you become impressed as well because you are quite impressionable at that age. Then you start to believe in the innate talent myth. Don’t let this get into your psyche at all.

There are far greater and better things to focus on and improve on. The number one indicator that will matter is your effort. Someone with 100% effort but 0% talent will always win against someone with 100% talent but 0% effort. With zero exceptions. Whatever you want to be great at, put in the effort to learn about it.

There’s an infinite amount of resources for you to learn from. Books, internet, friends, or just cold-reaching out to an industry expert that you admire will do wonders for your life. Don’t let it go to waste. Anyone can get to where they want to get to these days. It first starts with your desire to get there.

In the past, the resources weren’t available. You couldn’t easily just reach out to someone you admire with the touch of a button. It was mostly face to face meetings. These days, there’s no need for that. There’s email, phone numbers, or word of mouth through social media. It’s a wonderful time to be alive.

Who knows just how much better life will get in the next decade or so? New inventions are popping up every day that is making life easier. Take advantage of it. The power is solely within you and the tools are out there for you to make it happen. Don’t worry about natural talent and just focus on effort.