Talent or Hard Work?

I often listen to people credit people for their work by calling them talented. Truth be told I used to toss the words “you’re talented” in ignorant awe. I believed as I’m sure most of us do, that it takes talent to be successful. Does it though?

Growing up the one thing I always noticed was how everyone around me praised others for how much talent they had. Naturally I did the same thing, it wasn’t until my university life that I really started to question that. Talent isn’t strictly speaking special by any imagination.

We all have talent, so why isn’t our talent alone enough to make us a success? I know there are some of us who don’t believe we have any talent whatsoever. Highly common misconception if you ask me because having talent is useless if we do not work hard.

But for some reason working hard is ostracized by society. No one wants to work hard, it’s not cool to have worked hard for something. It’s much cooler to believe that simply having talent is enough to make our wildest dreams come true.

For those of us lucky enough to identify our talents we are but only half way or well a small fraction of the way there. What we truly need is the humility and discipline to keep our heads down and work hard for what we want our talents to manifest into.

I used humility, discipline and talents all in one sentence, not by mistake but an indication of the amount of sacrifice our dreams will require from us. We don’t speak about hard work because talking about it also just seems like its alot that needs doing.

We are talking about hard work and not thinking about hard work big difference. We can spend weeks, months and even years thinking about how hard try something will be. Because when we start thinking about a thing we usually always start by seeing a complete picture. This picture can weigh us down because now we are thinking, how am I supposed to achieve that?

The truth is I don’t know the answer to your specific question, but I guarantee if we break it down it can be achievable. Let’s take me as an example shall we;

In June of 2017 my last year as a University of Zambia student I started an initiative called Kutambokisa. It started out by being a platform to help creatives Express, Expose and Collaborate with other creatives. Kutambokisa literally means Express yourself in Lozi(one of the languages from my country Zambia).

The more I got into it, the more I realised my dreams were shifting and I was starting to think of things differently. We last held a show in may of 2018 because as an aspiring business it simply wasn’t sustainable. I didn’t give up though, I just had to change my thinking.

It’s been 2 years but the idea of Kutambokisa and all she can be still wakes me up at night. Everything I’ve done in the last 2 years has been an attempt at making Kutambokisa sustainable. Sustainability has to do with resources also and we absolutely had none.

Its 2020 I’m working on a project with some great people, we call it Lemba. Lemba is an aspiring publishing house, school club and currently runs a personalized message service. This service is intended as our cash cow to make the organisation sustainable. Granted Lemba and Kutambokisa seem different that’s because they are expect for me Lemba is a moving part that is going to enable the dream of Kutambokisa to be fully realised.

For all those counting with me, that’s about 4 years of working on Kutambokisa and being amongst a handful of people to see any progress. The reason I’ve used me as an example is to show that the one thing hard work usually asks for is consistency and them the momentum snowballs.

Whatever we think we lack we just need to switch our minds off to hard work being uncool or extremely difficult. The one thing that has made me continue through is I no longer look at the big picture as the standard for success. However I do set myself daily activities and goals to ensure every day I’m building momentum, staying consistent and putting in the hard work.

Do you need to be talented, maybe but I’d rather we worked for what we want and get results. There is a common saying, “Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn’t work hard”. Whatever we dream and hope for will happen once we keep our heads down. Become consistent and put in the daily work.

Would you rather be talented or hard working?

As you decide what is of importance and value to you I hope you spread love everywhere you go and be a blessing to everyone around you.