30 Life Lessons for Inspiration and Creativity: Day 28

Lesson 28: Talent is Overrated

You don’t believe this, I know! I don’t either. I look at a photo that grips everything inside of me because of its beauty, I’ll listen to that smooth playing of the cello by The PianoGuys, I’ll admire someone’s amazing yoga poses and I’ll say, that’s talent!

But then I look back at my story. In fact, I feel like it gets repetitive to tell people that I bought a camera for a trip to Israel and took pictures of coca cola bottles in Hebrew script font, rocks, more rocks, dusty college students hiking across the Middle East, and taxi license plates with Arabic numerals on them. I would have to look at my photos without glasses on to say there was talent in those shots.

Having said that, I do believe in some limitations. You can’t force a dream of ballerina on yourself, well some of you can, and singing in tune just might not be your thing, but most of us are not there to start with. We don’t even dream of big things, we simply put a talent label on people. I’m guilty of that myself.

One of my favorite books is Talent is Overrated. The books talks about hard work, hard work, perseverance, hard work, grit, hard work, working on weaknesses, some more about hard work, and some more about perseverance. Many of my friends are mothers that I’d say have truly perfected the art of motherhood, with amazing Instagram accounts to prove it. They get so good at it, because they work on one thing every single day and push through even when they have sleepless nights, sick kids, and some even etsy shop orders to fulfill, to keep up with their creativity. They perfect their organization, their time management, their resourcefulness and no one can label them as having been born with a talent to be a mother. They’re an inspiration to me.

Most people have a modicum of talent, but it’s what you do in spite of it, is what I call talent.

And because posts are better with a photo, here are two recent favorites