Book 4:Beyond Talent by John C Maxwell
There are things that come naturally to us which might be a struggle for others and vice versa. People who can sing so well or are natural born leaders yet these are not always the ones who make up the 1% in their field.
In this book review blog, I talk about what John C Maxwell says makes a talent-plus person because talent alone is not enough to make anyone a G.O.A.T.
The Cambridge dictionary describes talent as a natural skill or ability to be good at something, especially without being taught. We all have something that we are good at. Sometimes we might not even see it but people close to us are very much aware of it. If we all have something we are good at, why is it that we still struggle to attain success. Success is relative but I believe we know when we are not doing our best or living our potential to make the most of our talent.
Here are 3 things I learnt that can help us to make the most out of our talent:
1.Focusing on 1 talent: Because of social media, we get to see many people succeed. It is good because it shows us what is possible and encourages us to go after our own dreams. What also tends to happen is, we often fail to focus on one thing until completion. When it becomes trendy to start a particular business, study a certain course or learn a certain skill, we drop what we had started to start something else. This kind of behavior makes us achieve very little in life. We cannot be experts at everything, but we can be great at something.
If we do not have focus, we end up being all over the place and that weakens our talent. The people who have achieved greatness chose one thing and gave all their time and energy to it.
2.Preparation positions us to showcase our talents: If you have ever attended any performance, you know that everything comes together so beautifully from the amount of time spent preparing. If anyone who is a natural born singer joins the stage without preparing, the will not be in sync with everyone and would ruin the show. Talented as we can be, we often miss opportunities because we fail to prepare. If we wait for the big stage to perform and we do nothing today to prepare, those we see as less talented than us will always be taking trophy.
What exactly should we be doing , what will it cost us in time, effort and resources to be great? We should never look back at missed opportunities because we failed to prepare.
3.Remaining teachable stretches our talent: John Maxwell says ," If we cannot remain teachable having talent wont help you." Why ? Because the things that brought success in the past is not the exact thing that will bring success in the future. Talented as we might be, if we do not remain open to learning we run the risk of remaining stagnant. We must look for opportunities to learn in every situation, spending time with people who will stretch us and expose us to new experiences.
There are many talented people out there but still live a life less than what they were designed to. This is due to a lack of focus, failing to prepare for when an opportunity to showcase their talents and not being open to learning new things. Our talents can take us far if we focus on one thing at a time, spend time preparing and remaining teachable.