Two equally talented cricketers, trained by the same coach since childhood, played together and created waves in school cricket. Soon, they represented the country and one of them went on to become the God of cricket, while the other, who at one point was considered more talented, soon faded away into relative obscurity.
What could be the possible explanation for a situation like this? We see it often in schools, colleges and the corporate world, where talented people get derailed for no apparent reason. There are numerous cases where a star performer with loads of talent, initially shows a lot of promise but soon fades away into oblivion.
A simple, brilliant, and yet a ground-breaking idea by the world renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck, could possibly give us an explanation. She says, “I have always been deeply moved by outstanding achievement and saddened by wasted potential.” This inspired her to invest decades of research on studying achievement and success. The result was a book called MindSet. Carol Dweck divides people into two types — people with fixed mind sets and those with a growth mindset.
People with a fixed mindset believe that their talents and traits are given and cannot be changed. Such people spend their time documenting their talents rather than developing them, they truly believe that talent alone is responsible for success.
On the other hand, people with growth on their mind, operate with a belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through efforts and that talent is only a starting point. Though people may differ in their talents and aptitudes, everyone has the potential to change and grow through application and hard work. Robert Sternberg, the famous cognitive psychologist, from Cornell University, who is considered a guru in intelligence states that people achieve expertise not because of some “fixed prior ability, but due to purposeful engagement”.
In other words, you don’t have to let your talents be a limiting factor, you can be anything that you want to be, provided that you are willing to work for it. Alfred Binet was the inventor of the IQ test, and he had a completely different take on why IQ tests were designed in the first place. It was done so as to identify children who were not benefitting from the Paris public schools, and so that new educational programmes could be designed to keep them on course.
So its good to constantly challenge and keep reinventing yourself. If you are willing to put in effort and relentless practice you can become anything you set out to be. Remember, some of our greatest inventors and authors were once considered ordinary children.
R A Nadesan is an executive coach, behavioural and soft skills trainer with a pan India presence. He can be reached at ranadesan@yahoo.co.uk