America's Got Talent?

Want to know a little pet peeve of mine? When people say, "Wow, you're so talented! I wish I could [insert activity here] like you do!" Granted, I am/was one of those people. But let me explain.

When you say something like that, you're putting yourself down. You're telling yourself that you could never measure up to what another person can do because they're just naturally better than you are. That's not good, because what happens is you give up on trying to get better. You think, "I'll never be as good as they are, so why should I even try?"

I'm not saying that talent isn't real. People do have gifts for different things. Me, for example: I happen to really like words. I like to express myself through words, and I know how to make them work. Some people have a natural affinity for a sport, art, or music. They just know where the pencil lines need to go or how to hit a baseball just right. But when you but everything down to just dumb luck, that's not fair to the person.

Click the jump for more!

Everything takes practice. To get better at playing the piano, play more piano. To get better at basketball, play more basketball. To get better at painting, paint more. Are you seeing the pattern? Great authors have written countless stories before receiving fame. To say they're just talented writers means you're dismissing all of the hard work they've done.

Like I said above, I don't mean that talent should be rejected completely. But people don't simply pick up a guitar and learn to play it overnight.

Here, I'll put up a visual, if that helps.

I know you can't see it too well, but if you click the image, it should get bigger.

Here we have a lovely collage of my art through time. The person here, Trevor, is one of my older characters, so I had a lot of drawings of him. Anyway, as you can see, my art style has changed and improved ever since I first started drawing. I didn't just put a pencil down and start drawing like the picture on the far right. It took time, practice, and perseverance. Even just the other day, I was trying to draw something and for whatever reason, I couldn't get it right. I got frustrated, threw the drawing away, and read a book for a while (it helps me with de-stressing). After some time, I went back and tried again.

Do you want another example? Look through my blog archive. Go on, I'll wait.

I don't know about you, but I cringed as I read some of those older posts. Alright, I have had this blog ever since I was eight. I was young. But even as you look at things from 2010, you can see that Younger Me didn't exactly write the most... intelligent posts. That's changed... mostly. Part of it's because I've gotten older and somewhat more mature, but the other part is because I've practiced writing.

If you're going to take anything away from reading this, here's how I'd sum it all up:
1) Don't give up on something you love to do just because someone is better at it than you.
3) Talent and good luck play a small part, but the only way to get better at anything is to practice doing it.

Now, what do you think? Let me know in the comment section below this post!