Faith Venture

“Wouldn’t it be great to be gifted?”

Seth Godin is a marketing guru, but his blog comments encompass much more than marketing.

So, he asked the question above.

Have you ever thought that? I have. Have you ever wished that on your children? Probably.

In a recent post, Godin answered the question–sort of–in his unique way:

In fact…

It turns out that choices lead to habits.

Habits become talents.

Talents are labeled gifts.

You’re not born this way, you get this way.

You can be gifted, it turns out. It’s your choice. And you can teach your kids to become gifted. One choice leading to a habit becoming a talent.

It also helps to believe in yourself. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, discovered that those talented individuals who were so freakishly awesome that they could be known by a single name typically had devoted 10,000 hours to concentrated practice before they achieved super elite status.

We don’t need that much. 2,000 hours of concentrated study or practice can get you to a level of expert in many cases. But you have to trust it. I have a few years of technical training with a degree in Liberal Arts. Did some graduate school, but I didn’t like it. But I do like philosophy and theology. I’ve probably read 1,000 books on those subjects over the past 40 years or so. I’m no scholar, I think. However, I was just reading a passage from the Bible and thought about what I’d been taught about the interpretation. But, I thought to myself, the passage doesn’t read that way. Then I heard a guy with a seminary degree voice the same thought. Hmmm, maybe I’m not so dumb.

What about you? Are there areas in which you’ve already achieved better than average expertise? And with some more concentrated practice and study you could become a recognized expert?

You can do it.

This entry was posted on March 13, 2013 at 5:55 am and is filed under Disciplines, Study. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.