It is so hard to know what is the truth and what has been stories, perspectives, or straight-up lies that have been passed on as truths. Our parents, schools and religious institutions have passed on some many bits of information our brains are filled with thousands of constructs and ideologies that in the end may not even be true. One big one is the idea of natural talent.
The journey of constructs
Discovering engrained thoughts aren’t necessarily based on truth, is so hard to come to grips with. Here is an example. Yesterday Jeremiah and I went outside to practice shooting our bows. Jeremiah has practiced for YEARS, me maybe a total of 10 times over the last 3 years. I kept missing the target and losing my arrows in the ground. The feeling of embarrassment, shame, frustration begin to swell up inside me. I dig in and try to focus harder and ask questions to force my brain into understanding all the movements and will myself into perfect form. This just leads to me feeling these negative emotions even more because my shots don’t improve instantly. I ended up ending on a missed shot, angry at myself, Jeremiah, the dogs, and goats. I spend the rest of the evening lost in emotions of anger and embarrassment.
I woke up this morning and my friend pushes me to work on my models to help do thought work. So I do a model on yesterday’s bow shooting miserableness. I find behind the anger and embarrassment is the thought of Natural Talent. I have this idea stuck in my head that if I am not a natural talent at something then I am not smart or talented enough. Let’s be clear, I spend a lot of my life avoiding situations where I will not feel smart or talented, because secretly inside I believe I am not smart or talented. I hate facing situations that strike that nerve and say yep you are right; you aren’t smart or talented.
Natural talent and practice
One forgets all the practice and time they put in to be good at the things they are currently talented at. The majority of us all believe in this Natural Talent ideology. To prove it, try something new, suck at it and see how you feel? Shitty? Want to say I am not good at that so I am not going to do it? That is this natural talent ideology. From my thought work I know if I want to change my emotions I have to change my thoughts. To change my thoughts I have to have a more logical thought. So I googled Natural Talent and found this ideology is based on MYTHOLOGY, what the!!! All of us are going around believing if we aren’t good at something at the beginning then we aren’t talented and should find something else. What a crock of crap!
In mythology, they taught that the gods were given special gifts and talents and from there humanity ran with that concept and began teaching all of its children this idea that was made up to create an interesting story. Ugh, …we spend so much time beating ourselves up over a made-up story. After I understood that natural talent was a fairy tale ideology and to be really good at something comes from hours of practice PERIOD. There is so much research out there that backs this up. First, I just want to say thank you to all these amazing researchers that help clear things up! Carol Dweck, Malcolm Gladwell, and Daniel Coyle are just a few out there proving to us that being good at something comes from practice. Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers (which is FANTASTIC) he discusses how we need 10,000 of practice on something to be an expert. He uses the example of Steve Jobs and others. Carol Dweck’s book Mindset; she goes into depth about the research around natural talent vs practice and how no matter how “gifted” all study participants required the same amount of practice hours.
What is crazy is I have read those books and my brain remembers the content, but the natural talent ideology is still a concept I filter new experiences through. Thus, the reason my coaches tell me thought work takes practice, to change old thoughts one must practice thinking different ones.
The thought work
Learning to identify emotions and then figuring out the thought behind them takes practice and then more practice to create new thoughts. So what I have learned is to see my brain react next time I shoot my bow and then gently remind my brain, natural talent is a myth and to be good at something just like everyone else I need to happily practice.
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