Is talent really needed in this day and age? The world has progressed to a point where people do not need to have specific talents before they can make it. You don’t need to have the voice of an angel before you can make it in the music industry, and you don’t have to be an ace actor before you can make your mark in movies. You can be anything at all that you want, you just have to be willing to work it.
You can have the talent, but it does not guarantee that you will succeed at it. As a matter of fact, choosing to rely solely on talent alone will get you nowhere and will most likely lead to failure. For the talent to grow and begin to bear fruits, we need to constantly work on it, get better at it and find a way to convert it into a means of livelihood. Only then are we going to truly be putting our talents to their fullest potential.
Talent gets you through the door, but hard work will see you through the entire journey. Talent gives you an edge over others, and you will find yourself able to master that particular skill at a rate that is faster than your peers learning the same skill. But, if you are not careful, if you are not intentional about what you are choosing to learn, someone who is willing to work hard but has no previous talent in that skill will overtake you and eventually get better at it than you.
Talent without hard work is talent wasted. Imagine if all the greatest acts of our time refused to work hard, just sitting at home and crossing their arms waiting for the world to miraculously come and find them out. Then the world would have been deprived of a lot of greatness. It does not matter how talented you are, if you do not put yourself out there, the only people that will know of your talent will be just your family and friends. And that is never enough if you are looking to consider it as a professional path.
Talent should go hand in hand with hard work, we should be willing to do what it takes to get what we want. And seeing as it is our talent, we would enjoy doing it immensely because it is sure to be a source of passion for us.
For me, one of my talents lie in my writing skill. At first I didn’t know Jack about writing. I had thought it was just as simple as writing a story and then finishing it up with “The End.” Well, it was as I continued writing that I learned otherwise. That was how I started seeing the way other authors wrote their books and stories and figured if it worked for them, then it would most likely work for me. Back then, classes that had to do with writing were very expensive, so they were as far from my mind as the Bermuda Triangle is far from my hometown in Imo State.
So, I found other ways to learn how to write. And that helped me immensely, because I never really stopped writing. But as years passed, writing became more wide spread and there were more people cropping up all over the place ready to teach. I was now able to afford it. And that was how I got to learn other skills besides story writing and add them to my portfolio.
I was not talented in writing towards a specific target, I learned that when I started ghostwriting. I had no knowledge on how to write blogs, flash fiction and articles, I learned that when I came on Hive, I also learned Book Project Consultancy and Manuscript Editing, both certified.
All of these still have to do with my skill as a writer. If I had chosen not to learn anything else, just focusing on writing novels, the story would be very different today.
The value of hard work is grossly underrated, while the value of talent is overrated. Even the best of the best that are recognized across all fields in the world right now, there are people tucked away somewhere else in the world who are better than the world best. But no one knows of them.
There might be footballers better than Messi and Ronaldo, but for one reason or the other they never made it past their neighborhood. One of the first rule of making it is to get exposed. Even if you have the talent, work hard on the exposure, let people know that it is something you are known for. So that when they think of that thing you do, they will think of you.
Apart from my writing though, I am blessed with other talents; I am quite good with basic electrical installation procedures, I knew all this before learning them formally in school, I also draw but I gave up on this particular talent when I realized I was getting worse and worse with time. There was a time when I was really good at drawing, had my sketchpad full of what I had drawn.
Honestly, I have no idea what happened, soon, I could no longer draw from my head anymore unless I was copying from a comic or something else. Eventually, I couldn’t even do that. So I gave up on the pencil for real and embraced the pen graciously. Although now that I think of it, I might consider trying to draw again. Who knows, I might get the skill back.
That is something that happens though if a talent is left to lie fallow for a long time, then it will most likely fade until it will exist only in the memory.
So, my dear friends, what is that talent that you have? Why are you still keeping it to yourself? Take it out there and share it with the world. Let them know what you’ve got! Work hard and make your people proud. Because it would be criminal if you had a talent and you refused to share it with the rest of the world. Purely criminal.
Thank you for reading. Feel free to share your thoughts with me in the comments section below, I would love to know what you are thinking. Till we meet in the next post.
This post is inspired by the first topic of the week which is Hardwork Or Talent. Feel free to take part.
