the-benefits-of-hard-work

I always feel slightly annoyed when people say that I am talented in what I do- like being talented in speaking, trading and business. This is because they do not realise that it is not inborn talent. It is the results of hours and hours of handwork, practice and getting up from from multiple failures.

For example, I am now able to speak to thousands of people for up to four full days (> 40 hours) without a script and can speak on almost any topic. It is only because I started public speaking at age 13 and rehearsed and spoken to people for thousands and thousands of hours. When I first started, I was nervous, lousy and untalented.

I am now able to make a couple of thousand dollars a day easily by trading stocks and forex. Well, this is only after 18 years of trading and losing tens of thousands of dollars when I first began. This is after looking at stock charts for 3-4 hours a day for 18 years.

So, when people say I am lucky to be talented, I feel insulted, because it discounts all the handwork and pain I put in to get here. In the video below, Will Smith says the same thing. It was not talent that got him to where he is. It was nothing but hours of hardwork that created the talent.

In his best-selling book, ‘Outliers’, Sociologist, Malcolm Gladwell did research on people who were exceptionally gifted in sports, music, businesses etc… and found that they had all ONE thing in common…. they all spent at least 10,000 hours of handwork and practice focusing on that single skill for many years. All talent he found was the result of handwork.