Success is 1% talent and 99% hard work

How often do we, falling asleep and being alone with the world around us, feel sorry for ourselves, so unfortunate, deprived of all sorts of talents?

Look, others burn brightly from birth, shining with playing musical instruments, charmingly performing complex opera works, dancing charmingly, reciting classical works from memory, speaking foreign languages ​​​​fluently, easily solving the most difficult tasks in their minds, defeating everyone in competitions …
And I, gray mediocrity, good for nothing, miserable and weak…
Sob, sob…
Well, God did not give us any talents, luck passed us by, fate cheated us.
Well, there's nothing to be done, the world is unfair, – nothing to others, but nothing to us …
Since there are no talents, we won't even try – it's still useless. Nothing will work for us, the untalented …

I will not argue with anyone, let alone prove something, but I will give a few examples.

Laszlo Polgar, a Hungarian teacher, studied the childhood and the source of success of many brilliant people, in particular, Wolfgang Mozart, and came to a striking conclusion: the source of Mozart's brilliant success lay in his upbringing, and not in innate talent.
Wolfgang's father was a violinist himself and devoted all his free time to learning to play the violin, harpsichord, singing, and solfeggio for his son.
Having studied the childhood and life history of many great people, L. Polgar wrote the book “Bring up Genius!" How to Raise a Genius.

Laszlo Polgar did not become the creator of yet another theorem or hypothesis, the proof of which would lie in the realm of logic and scholasticism. He took a different path: he proved his assertion with his own life, raising three brilliant chess players, who had no equal before their appearance on the chess Olympus and still have not.
When Laszlo decided to realize his conviction, God gave him three daughters, but our researcher did not lose his head, did not back down and achieved outstanding results that simply shocked the entire chess world.
And the more acute and brighter the achievement of Laszlo and the success of his daughters are perceived.
Why chess in particular – it's just that Laszlo’s first daughter found his chess in the closet.
Laszlo Polgar and his wife devoted all their time to the development and upbringing of their children. As a result, their daughters became chess geniuses, and the youngest, the most successful, defeated male world champions.

Philip Ross, "How to Raise a Genius": "Studies over the past two decades have shown that, strictly judged, professional gamblers do no better than amateurs, true connoisseurs of wine distinguish drinks hardly more finely than laymen, and famous psychiatrists are able to help patients no more than their colleagues, not burdened with degrees and titles. And even when the existence of competence is not in doubt, for example, in the field of education or business, it is often difficult to measure, much less explain.

That is, “judging strictly”, as F. Ross writes, then most of us are “mediocrity”.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Geniuses and Outsiders, writes about the "rule of 10,000 hours" that you must spend at least doing what you need to achieve success. He also says that innate ability in achieving success plays a smaller role than preparation.

Eric Bertrand Larssen in the book "Without Self-Pity" says that the father of tennis player Andre Agassi worked as a tennis court watchman in a Las Vegas hotel and Mike devoted all his free time to tennis training for his children. The three elders practiced every day with a tennis gun, which their father improved by increasing the speed of the balls.
When Andre was born, his father had already polished his training methods. He hung a tennis ball over his son's bed to develop hand-eye coordination.
As soon as Andre could walk, he tied a tennis racket to his arm. When the boy was two years old, he learned to serve right through on the big tennis court.

Tiger Woods was brought to the golf club when he was not yet a year old.

David Beckham, as a child, disappeared day and night in a park in East London, where he practiced for hours on goal from a certain point. His father said that David "lived in this park."
Beckham said: “My main secret is constant training. I have always been convinced that if you want to achieve any results in life, you must train, train and train again.

Writer Ray Bradberry has been writing at least a thousand words a day since he was twelve. After 8 years, he became famous and during this time he wrote three million words.

Here we have the answer to our nightly whining about the lack of innate talents.

Erik Larssen concludes that talent is a word that should not be.

F. Ross writes that all theorists agree on one thing: the "rule of ten years", according to which approximately so much time of hard work is required to perfectly master any skill. Even young geniuses like the mathematician Gauss, the composer Mozart, and the chess player Bobby Fischer had to put in equivalent effort—they just started earlier and probably worked harder than the rest.

The world is arranged in such a way that peaks are reached not by those who were given something from birth, but by those who paid for success, for victory with blood, sweat, perseverance, patience and many, many hours of training and exercises.

If we identify with what we want to achieve, devote enough time to mastering something, that is, part of our life, when the skill or ability becomes part of our personality and character, then we will also succeed in anything like these great the people we mentioned above.

So the law of success in the Universe is not an innate ability, but acquired skills, not a "law of talent", but a "rule of 10,000 hours."

Yes, there are those for whom almost everything is easy from birth, but if they do not make the necessary efforts and enough time to achieve the goal, then they will remain with nothing. I will say more, they will lose even what was given to them from birth.

Since we are used to whining and complaining, we may continue to lament that we were born to “the wrong parents” who “didn’t tie a tennis racket to our arm” or put skis instead of sandals on us.

But comparing your life with others is at least stupid – each of us is in our own situation.