Our friend Tyler sets sail today on a round-the-world trip.

Having acquired a vessel suitable for the journey, gathered all of the gear, and plotted his course, he’s ready to go.

Many people have a dream of circumnavigating the globe. Tyler is actually going to do it. He has the skill and resources to make it happen. Just as important, he has the mindset.

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A student and I were working through some challenging problems involving ratios.

But not the most challenging problems. There were a few that she was really stuck on, but we ignored those. We went backward in her book, section by section, until we found problems that she knew how to do but didn’t really know how to explain, even though she was able to get the right answer.

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I realized that I’ve been having a quiet, months-long temper tantrum.

The last time I tried to knit something, I couldn’t get my gauge to come out right. That means that my stitches were too big for the pattern I was knitting, so anything I tried to knit would end up being too big.

I went down a needle size to see if my stitches would be small enough; same problem. I went down another needle size, and another—same problem. A problem I hadn’t really encountered in two years of obsessive knitting. So I put the project away, and nine months later I still haven’t knit anything.

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A lot of us have the same problem: There’s something we want to accomplish, and we don’t know how to make it happen.

We undertake the journey with excitement and cheering crowds, like Dorothy on the yellow brick road, and then fizzle out when everyone else has gone home and we realize how hard it’s going to be.

Or we work diligently, day by day, and then realize that we don’t seem to be getting any closer to our desired outcome.

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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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