I have had the great good fortune of being talented, and in a slight, obscure way it’s tripped me up.
My dad is a brilliant, ‘left-brain’ engineer. He’s much smarter than me. My mom is a talented, ‘right-brain’ artist. She’s far more creative than me. I however, have been blessed with half of my chromosomes from each of them.
I’m not talented in any prodigious way. I’m seldom the smartest or the most creative person in a room, but my lucky mix of chromosomes means I have a reasonable competence across a broad range of undertakings.
In school and university I never had to study to get reasonable grades. After school I was able to build a reasonably successful small business with relative ease.
I was lucky. I coasted through my teens and twenties, achieving good (but not great) outcomes with hardly any effort.
Many people would be satisfied with an average outcome for below average effort. I was, although I wasn’t conscious of the choice.
But in my late twenties I reached the limit of my natural ability. My chromosomes could only get me so far.
And here’s the downside to my talent – I had never needed discipline to get a good outcome because I had talent. When I finally reached the far edge of talent, I was stuck. I didn’t have the tools required to cross the chasm and continue my journey.
I wondered why I was stuck. I was a talented individual. I’d never been stuck before.
Then I read a quote by Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States, and I still remember feeling my stomach drop.
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
Calvin Coolidge, from a 1929 issue of The Dallas Morning News, although earlier variations exist which I also really like.
I hadn’t developed the habit of discipline and I was on track to become an unsuccessful man with talent!
Habits Help Us Become The Best Version Of Ourselves
I’m certainly not the first one to figure out that habits help us cross the chasm. I think it’s this same idea that underpins the good PR that the word ‘grit‘ is currently enjoying.
But this isn’t a new idea.
“The nature of men is always the same; it is their habits that separate them.”
Confucius, (551 BC – 479 BC)
We are all creatures of habit, even if we believe we aren’t. Repeatedly doing something is a habit of commission. Repeatedly not doing something is still a habit, a habit of omission.
Thus the absence of conscious habits is also a habit.
Sometimes we choose our habits consciously, but most of the time we don’t. Most of the time, we blindly stumble into them without even realising.
“The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.”
Plato, (423 BC – 347 BC)
To be the best version of ourself, we must consciously choose our habits, otherwise we shall be conquered by our unconscious ones.
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; ‘these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions’; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: ‘the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life… for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy’.”
Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (1926), p. 76. The quoted phrases within the quotation are from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
In order to be the best version of ourselves, to achieve a complete and happy life, we must consciously choose our habits and practice them daily.
I suggesting that in order to be the best version of ourselves, to achieve a complete and happy life, we must consciously choose our habits, and practice them daily.
And while I know a lot of creatives struggle with routine, I’m guessing there are a fair number of rebellious entrepreneurs out there who could do with a little more discipline in their daily routines as well.