JONGSON PARK

For those of us that didn’t have much to begin with. No money. No privileges. No education. No direction. No guidance. No mentors. No outlook. No skills. It feels so hopeless, condemned, fatalistic. So appealing, the idea that change is possible by grinding it out. Self-improvement is built on discipline and will-power. Success is attainable through dedication, hustle and perseverance.

Blood, sweat and tears. 110%. 24/7/365. Maybe it’s necessary, maybe it is the best and only solution of getting out of a bad or pessimistic situation. Like a life preserver in an ocean of confusion, doubt and discouragement trying to bring you down. But continue to have a growth mindset, it’s not the absolute and only way, what worked in the beginning of the growth and development journey doesn’t have to be the midway or final stretch of the journey.

Definitely hard to see and experience at any stage of the journey but there is grace and compassion if you can find it. And maybe ultimately what we’re looking for.

For those of us that didn’t have much to begin with,
Dealt a hand of cards that would’ve kept us stuck where we are.

Either accept life is a shitty draw…

Life sucks because nobody cares, whether you make it or you don’t.
Why don’t they care if I live or if I never existed?
What a selfish question, when they got their own problems they’re dealing with.

Or make up your mind to put your boots on the ground cause what do you have to lose.
Make a way, make a path, give yourself a chance.

Nobody cares but that’s okay, cause then you realize you don’t need anyone’s permission.

I know sometimes our here and now is too hard and impossible and the thought of a better day is all we have to get us through this one.

But don’t save too many futures for your better days.
There comes a point and time where the best day is already here and is all we have.

What do we as a society value more, talent or effort?

Someone that is able to easily perform or produce a high quality output with very little effort. Or..
Someone that has to work 2, 3, 5, 10 times the effort to produce the same quality output.

There’s something in the back of our minds or maybe a compulsion to over-value “talent” or believe it means something special. Not referring to the exceptionally gifted, like the 1% of the population that can literally do what nobody else in the world can do. i.e. redraw a photographic cityscape after glancing at it for 3 seconds or do astrophysical calculations in their heads.

But for a more common understanding of talent, we think “talent” should make things easy. If we’re “talented” then it’s low effort, everyone would easily recognize our ability and how good we are. We would rather be talented than have to work harder with less talent. Because “talent” is a gift isn’t it, it makes us special? Talent is like being ordained with ability and divine purpose, knowing what we should be doing with our lives. And if we know we’re not as “talented”, but it’s what we want to do, it might be having to accept the narrative, well I better work harder than everyone else because I’m not “special”, “gifted” or “it was meant to be”. And that seems like an already defeatist starting point.

So then how many people give up on or don’t even start something because they feel like they don’t have the “talent”. When they could have been just as good, but with 10x the time, effort and perseverance. What lessons and processes would they have learned and gone through that a more “talented” person would’ve simply skipped over or just have taken for granted. That they could teach and share with the rest of us?

I think as a society we value “talent” more, we’re in awe of it, it’s something rare and meant to be coveted and desired. Someone might take offense if another person, what was meant as a compliment, the amount of effort and time they put into their work that another person would have done with less effort.

Hard work is less valued and makes ability and success seem less unique or not quite as prestigious; and hard work, effort and perseverance is like a “commoner’s” experience.

Maybe “talent” does require less effort. But talent is not some rare divine gift limited to only the few. Talent is simply a measurement of the rate at which an ability is acquired. Someone with a rate of talent might be able to acquire the ability with just 10 repetitions or interactions while another person might take them 100 interactions or even 1000. If these two people put in the same amount of effort over the same time, then the “talented” person would acquire more abilities at a faster rate, and the less “talented” person would acquire fewer abilities and would eventually not be considered as a quality output.

The lesser “talented” person could put in 10 or 100 times the effort to produce the same quality output as the “talented” person. Maybe it would require more time too, but not impossible right? Talent is simply a rate of measurement.

But also a fatal flaw of “talented” people is not putting in a high level of effort because they know they’re talented and that it requires very little effort to impress people or simply be better than those around them. This happens a lot in sports, where an athlete is “naturally gifted” when he compares himself to his peers in high school, but doesn’t learn to put in the work and then goes to the next level in college or professional sports, where they can’t just rely on their natural ability. Unfortunately, these people get weeded out before the pros and never become household names or are washed-up before even getting started and are household names for the wrong reason.

So what’s the point? Chances are, we are not one of the very few in the top 5%, 10%, 15 or even 20%, our talent is on some scale between 0 and 100%. So just because we’re not in the top 20% doesn’t mean we shouldn’t even try, start or put in the time and effort. First principles mindset, whether you’re “talented” or not, shouldn’t the focus, intention or ability be on developing the effort, work and perseverant mindset. Shouldn’t we start valuing, emphasizing effort over talent.

The stress and anxiety, urgency and unease of not being where you want to be in your life, feeling like you should be at a certain place or looking around you and the perception that everyone else is doing more, better, further along than you are. It’s hard not to think that way, when you’re trying so hard, putting in the effort, energy, determination and perseverance, doing everything you can to better and further yourself and your family.

But it’s a double-edged sword, the desire to want to be better is what causes action and momentum to move in that direction, but it’s also the same mindset that starts to create that gnawing low-key stress and anxiety, of a better place, nothing is quite good enough, self-criticism and judgment, not being content, satisfied or robbing happiness.

So how do you have one without the other? It’s good to have a destination in mind, a vision of yourself, things you want to do and accomplish. But you can’t compare who you are now to who that person is in the future or the people around you. The word “better” implies an act of comparison. Comparison is the first thief of peace of mind and essential gratitude.

You are who you are at this moment in time, accept that and just be who you are in the here and now – not who you think you should be or feeling the anxiety that you’re not quite there yet. Because that feeling will become engrained and won’t go away even when and if you do “make it”.

It may seem like the only way to push forward is with criticism and motivation comes from a gnawing discontent, competition or comparisons but I don’t think that’s true anymore.

It would be nice to already be where you want to be, who you want to be, but there are many lessons to be learned to get to where you want to go. And it’s best to be fully present, loving, compassionate and empathetic to yourself along that journey. Low-key stress and anxiety from comparison, competition and criticism is a fear-based mindset.

Life is always throwing us into situations that we are meant to learn from. And when we learn it, our only reward is to move on and learn the next thing. But we only get awareness to see the new lesson and become equipped to learn the new thing from the tools obtained from the prior lesson. But when we don’t learn the lesson we’re destined to repeat the same lesson. That’s when life seems so hard and difficult, when we continually run into the same problems, situations, relationships and we don’t know why.