The Endless Debate: Talent or Hard Work?

I have a confession to make: I love sports dearly.

Oh and no, it's not the type love you are thinking of.  It's definitely not the fan that attends every game.  It's not the crazy guy who calls into sports radio stations to complain vehemently.  I don't have a tattoo proclaiming my love for my home team.  I can't even recall the last pro sports game I attended.

Sports: Where Crying is Funny

Some people love sport for the feeling of peer group acceptance, social camaraderie or just for having a team to root for (or whatever).  These are all great reasons  but it goes much deeper, geekier and dorkier than that.

Sports are a magnificent microcosm (definition: a miniature representation of something) for life and all the struggles, victories and learning (and pretty much everything else) that happens throughout the course of one's life. 

Plenty of people pooh-pooh this sort of idea because they see a sport like soccer as just a bunch of men or women kicking a ball around and being way too serious about a childish game.

What a terribly superficial way to view athletic competition.  Competitive sport contains layers and layers of beauty from the breathtaking athletic ability of the human body to seeing years and years of hard work culminating in both the joy of victory and the crushing blow of defeat (and so much more).

How can everyone not relate on some level?!?

How many people slave away at their job, working to improve and move up in the company and have to face the ups and downs that come with striving to achieve things? How about trying to lose weight? Or learn a language? Or get married? All involve ups and downs, wins and losses, learning, require you to adapt and change yourself and they all put a giant mirror in your face in which you see who you really are.

MY FAVORITE SPORTS-RELATED TOPIC

My favorite debate in the area of athletics is the ageless debate of what matters more; talent or hard work?

This goes far, far beyond sports but it is so magnificently on display in this arena.

Think about an athlete like Lebron James, a man who is 6'8” tall, 260 pounds and is a one in six billion type of athlete. He very well could have the most athletically gifted genes on the planet. That is innate talent right there.

As a fan or even casual viewer of basketball you see him and say “Of course he's a great basketball player, he's gifted/talented/lucky/athletic”.

It makes sense.

How could it not? The man can literally jump over people (see video below) and that's simply not something the average person can do.

But it's a slippery slope of thinking; it isn't an accurate picture of reality. It reinforces the false idea that talented people are the successful ones, so if you aren't talented then don't even try.

WHAT IS A MORE ACCURATE PICTURE OF REALITY THEN?

I feel I have an especially intimate relationship with the sport of basketball and can help reveal more of the picture.

Let's look at someone who isn't Lebron James. Someone who isn't “talented”. Take the 12^th man on any NBA basketball roster, the guy who doesn't play and who the average fan assumes “sucks” because he is surrounded by the world's BEST BASKTBALL PLAYERS.

Take Brian Scalabrine from the Chicago Bulls. He is a slow, tall, goofy looking white guy. Everyone (it seems) stupidly assumes they could beat the guy one on one. 

But a guy like Scalabrine works his ass off and he's worked his ass off for longer than most people have worked at their 9-5 jobs for. From middle school (assuming he started in middle school) on he has put hours of effort in the gym, sacrificed a normal social life and has gone through the long hard grind of an athlete. For all those people who think athletics is just a merry-go-round of joy, ask a division one college athlete about how much time they have to commit on a daily basis to their sport.

I remember speaking with a football player who played for a divison one program telling me that they had to lift every morning at six, attend a study hall in the afternoon, practice in the evening, all while having a full classload and trying to have a normal social life. Meanwhile your average college student is getting high/drunk in the middle of the day and struggling to attend class because they were so wasted the night before. That sounds more like a merry-go-round of joy to me.

A famous story athelete commitment is of Peyton Manning. Manning will go down as one of the best quarterbacks ever and the man (along with being “talented”) works his ass off. A lot of his success can be attributed to the amazing connection he had with one of his wide recievers, Marvin Harrison, who seemed to have a psychic connection with his quarterback. But was their success rooted in luck, or was it really a psychic connection they had?

Niether.

Their success came from the hours and hours and hours they spent alone, repeating the same thing over and over and over again. They would be on the practice field, practicing snap after snap, running routes and timing. They wouldn't just do this once a week. Or twice a week. Or a couple times a month. They did it ALL THE FUCKING TIME! That was their life. The same boring shit.

Could you imagine their conversation after years of the same routine;

Peyton: “Ready to do the same shit we did yesterday?”

Marvin: “[SIGH] Yup.”

HOW EXCITING!

And yet most people think a professional athlete just swims around in a bathtub of cash and hangs out with groupies and then just shows up for the game (some do but those guys usually don't stick around too long).

The casual fan assumes these two guys just have a connection; Peyton Manning was born with the ability read defenses, time the pass and throw a perfect spiral without years and years of practice.

Actually, I'm sure a majority of people “get it” and have some appreciation for this aspect of the game. But even then, to see how day in and day out, even the supposed “worst” athletes of any sport work their ass of is truly something to appreciate.

(As a side note: I'm not advocating for treating athletes like god figures who work harder than the average person. It's simply an illustrative example of the "behind the scenes" reality of any great skill or proficiency)

REAL LIFE ANALOGIES

How about a real life example; I think most people view entrepreneurs or CEO's as being talented. Someone will say “but they are so smart” or “they have so much energy” or “they have such a business sense”.

"He's smart, that's why he's successful"

All these could be true but there have been waves and waves of smart people coming out of Harvard and Yale who never did shit, who never worked hard for whatever reason or just settled for “good enough”.

Then you had junior college graduates who had a chip on their shoulder, saw that the odds were stacked against them, stuck with their commitments for a long period of time and still bulled their way through every obstacle to end up where they were.

Sports or business, it's all the same thing. There are millions of guys and gals who had the talent to play professional sports or just play at a high level in general who didn't having the burning desire to grind out the boring day-to-day work that it takes to play at a high level.

If you have access to one, ask a high school coach or a college coach of any sport about their experience with "wasted talent".  There is nothing more sad or indelible to the memory of a teacher of a sport to see someone with a God-given talent not use their abilities.

ANDY, YOU DIDN'T ANSWER THE QUESTION

Ok, so you noticed that I haven't really answered the question raised earlier; is it talent or hard-work that matters more?

...Because it doesn't matter. It's a bunch of silly mental masturbation to debate it and try to predict whether or not I could play in the NBA if I had worked harder or if this guy's business failed because he's not smart enough.

All I know is that you and I control only one end of that equation; how hard one can work.

The cynics of the world will say that you shouldn't work hard because the government will fuck you over, the 1% control everything, the odds are stacked against you, you aren't smart enough, you aren't special, you have to know somebody, people are out to scam you, you should be more realistic or WHATEVER other BS you can think of.

It's Always Someone Else's Fault

But looking at the reality of the situation you see something different. All people who have had a large degree of success worked their fucking ass off. Like WORKED THEIR ASS OFF. Imagine in your head what that means......have a good mental image of that.....now multiply that by 100. That's better.

I suppose I'm venturing into very controversial territory with this topic. To a certain degree, most of us would like to blame our lack of achievement on external factors and this certainly messes with that reality. “But what about x,y,z example of the world fucking me/this guy/this gal over” is going to pop up in your head and motivate you to comment below.

Any counter-example you can think of makes for great discussion but this whole post is not about me being right or you being right or this guy being wrong.  We are just looking for a more useful way to look at things to achieve a modicum of success. 

So if you liked this little write up or even hated it, I would simply ask you:

What is more useful? 

(1) Seeing the world through the lens that you have ultimate control over your fate 

-or- 

(2) Seeing the world through the lens that you are mostly at the whim of outside forces that control what will happen to you

That's the whole point.

[By the way, it's a rhetorical question. ;-) ]

Thanks for reading.

Motivation Re-Defined

I was thinking about motivation the other day.

Motivation is a weird thing. The rah-rah “pump up” videos (see below) are “motivational”. They are supposed to light a fire under your ass. If this homeless dude can reach his goals then what is your excuse?

You watch this and go “Fuck yeah!”, and drive to the gym and go workout.

"Fuck yeah! I'm excited!"

But inevitably you get to the point where you're too tired to make it to the gym. Suddenly a week has gone by.

“I was too busy, really, I had a lot going on!”

Whether the excuses are valid or not makes no difference. What started out as high motivation ended up turning into no motivation. This can happen quick. This can happen so quick that it can deflate you and think the shit is impossible.

I want to be motivated all the time. Everything would be so damn easy that way. I want to feel like I am just energized all the time, ready to tackle my goals like a caveman chasing a wooly mammoth.

This can work. But it is impossible to think that this is somehow a long-term strategy.

You can't rely on motivation really. That's because motivation, the way most people see it, is just a 5-hour energy; you are inspired by a story, by personal loss, or by lusting after something you don't have.

This can work. But sooner or later the energy will subside. The excitement and thrill of going after your goal will subside.

You'll do whatever you can to get it back. You'll watch that video multiple times. You'll drink. You'll smoke. You'll read a book. You'll see a therapist.

Fact is, you are chasing a high. Motivation won't get you to your goal.

Motivation goes deeper than how you feel. Motivation relies on your deep meanings of life. Seriously.

No matter what you do, whether it's sweeping floors of a high school gymnasium in Kansas, or you're a CEO of a fortune 500 company, your deep motivations (to make a difference, to change the world) will determine your quality of work.

This is backwards from the common paradigm. The common paradigm is: I work hard when I get money. The more money, the harder I work.

But this is a fool's game.

To see success in anything requires patience and consistent effort. It requires you to keep working on improving, even after you see success. How many bands/rappers/athletes/painters work their ass off to hit the payday and fame, only once they get there they suddenly drop out of the spotlight. They make one amazing record and everything else is shit.

When the band/rapper/athlete/painter was broke or not respected it was easy to be motivated. Nothing motivates you quite like competition.

But what about when everyone loves you? What about when you have a full bank account? What about when you achieve all your goals?

Then what? Do you just sit back and sit back in euphoria? Do angels fall from the sky and you drink mojitos on a beach in Hawaii?

FUCK NO.

You keep working hard.

See, motivation is deep, it is a spiritual endeavor.

Do you want to make a difference? Do you go after what you want to do (or rationalize and justify all the reasons you can't or shouldn't)? Do you want to achieve a level of mastery (just for fun)? Do you want to use your innate talents or let them whither away (very common)?

Answering yes to these questions means you have something stronger driving you. You aren't just hoping to “feel like” going to the gym, you go to the gym because you are going after what you want to do. You can feel like shit but you aren't relying on how you feel. It's about something else.

Short term motivation (see above video) is a necessary and useful tool. Unfortunately, it is extremely fleeting. It flows in peaks and valleys. It is not dependable. Thus, it cannot be the basis of how you do what you do.

If you don't feel like going to the gym today but know you should, just go. Go, stretch, do a light workout. Stick to your principles of following through.

Maybe next time you'll feel motivated, maybe not. But you'll eventually feel motivated and even more, you'll get to a point where you'll enjoy working out. Then you don't need to be motivated.

It's a much better place to be coming from.

The Beauty in Growth

Growing is pretty sweet.

Yes, the growth of an adolescent to adult is an amazing thing.  Same with the building of a skyscraper.

However, the type of growth I'm talking about isn't physical. It's usually only observable. It can't always be measured.

That's definitely growth right there.

Like when someone get's their finances in order. Or decides to quit smoking. Or makes an effort to stop avoiding confrontation. Or tries to be more social. Or attempts to meditate consistently. Or wants to make more money through a side job.

That's the kind of personal growth that rocks.

Like everything though, there is a dark side. It usually rears itself through unhappiness and ambition.

I would never ever consider working hard towards a goal to be a bad thing, but there are very many ambitious people who I don't want to aspire to be.

The difference is at the most basic level. Are you trying to get your finances in order so that other people will finally respect you? Are you doing it so that you can allow yourself to feel good at the end of it all?

Or are you doing it because it's a challenge? Because you feel like learning something new is fun? Maybe you just want to try something different.

These two approaches are completely opposed to one another.

One comes from a state of trying to “add something”. It is saying that you feel incomplete. Once you reach the goal you will find that elusive completeness.

The other approach says you feel good but are interested in challenging yourself for the sake of challenging yourself. If you feel like it will be a great opportunity to learn about yourself, about what gets you going and what makes you ticks, then you are probably coming from a better place.

Chances are good that you are coming from a place that is in between.

You feel that going after XYZ goal will add a dimension of peace or happiness to your life (that isn't there) but also are excited at a new challenge. It is rarely 100% one way or the other.

Yes, this picture has nothing to do with this post.  Or does it?

Besides, coming from a place of incompleteness can lead you to that second place. Becoming a workaholic to make more money (which is perceived as more happiness) can lead a person to burn out. Burning out can lead you to see that life is short and that it's not worth it to give your life to your job. From there, motivations change and you can strive after what makes you happy and energized.

So in the end improving yourself in any way shape or form is a good thing. It doesn't matter what it is or where you're coming from or if you're doing it for all the wrong reasons. 

Those are all just excuses for inaction anyway.