As a young, aspiring singer/songwriter, I dreamed of creating something incredible.

Inspired by The Beatles, Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, and Bob Dylan — in other words, world-class, genre-defining, generational talents — I thought about where my music would fit in the pantheon of the greats.

In my “planning,” I completely skipped over the part where I would write, perform, and promote my music, connecting with potential partners and fans one by one, building a career the way everyone has to build a career: day by day.

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My sister, a mother of three, dazzled the crowd in the school talent show, accompanying her daughters’ singing on cup percussion.

No one had known she possessed this skill, and their minds were blown. “You’re so talented!” they exclaimed.

She shrugged. “I spent a few hours learning it.”

My sister’s real accomplishment was to believe she could accomplish what she set out to do, and then to follow through by putting in the necessary time. Anyone could; not everyone does.

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Years ago, I was training a new employee. She wanted to improve a particular skill, so I recommended a book on the subject. 

Weeks later, she asked a related question. “What about that book I recommended?” I asked. 

“I’m reading it,” she said. 

In that moment, I learned something important about communicating my expectations. I had thought she would spend an afternoon or two reading the book to quickly learn and implement the material; however, she was actually reading two or three pages a night before bed. 

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A friend of mine shared with me a document sent home by her child’s teacher. Amidst clip art and whimsical typefaces, the flyer listed the qualities and habits of a person with a fixed mindset followed by the qualities of a person with a growth mindset, then offered some tactics for helping your child “get out of a fixed mindset and into a growth mindset.”

These mindsets, developed by Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford, were first described in her 2006 book Mindset. In recent years, they have been adopted by the mainstream educational community. Simply put, a fixed mindset means that you believe that your talent and intelligence are fixed traits; they cannot change. A growth mindset means that you believe that you can always get better.

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Talent is convenient.

It’s undeniably helpful to have early promise or natural aptitude in a particular area. We tend to enjoy things we’re good at. If you are naturally good at something, you will stick with it all the way to mastery.

However, the flip side concerns me more. If you are not naturally good at something that you really want to master, I urge you to stick with it anyway. Sooner or later, with consistent effort over time, some aspect of it will click. When you evaluate things several weeks, months, or years later, you may even find that your results are indistinguishable from the “talented” person.

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It's really pretty simple. If you want to succeed at something, whether it's learning an instrument or mastering fractions or running a marathon, you've got to just not quit.

Simple, but not easy, right? Here's what I've noticed in working as a teacher and coach across subject areas: 

When we think we are pretty good at something, we'll keep going until we have completed our objective.

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