131. You owe it to the world to share your talents

A few days ago, I was going through my usual night time routine before hitting the hay. I come back to my apartment from work at around 3 AM in the morning. I start off by browsing through some YouTube videos as revenge for not being able to do it throughout the day. After sometime, I realise that using my cellphone late in the night isn’t really good for my eyes, and it’s not productive either. So, I put my phone down, pick up whatever book I am reading at that time, turn on my portable reading light and start reading. And that’s exactly what I did that day as well.

A few pages in, my eyes still glued to the book, my mind began wandering. I would like to think this is a function of my mind being tired. But that day, it stuck to one thought. One thought that I hadn’t had in sometime.

“Didn’t I used to write too? What happened to that?”

This was the moment of truth when I realised I hadn’t written anything for over three months for myself, outside of work emails and reports, of course. And that just didn’t sit right with me. 

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”

– Octavia Butler

The people who know me know that writing has been an integral part of my personality and life for a better part of 8 years. I started this blog with the intention to quench my thirst for getting my thoughts out there. I really found my stride last year. I published more than 30 posts, and I was pretty happy with myself at that time. But every now and again, I find myself back in a spot of having to question my identity as a writer.

This led me into a deep spiral. I would beat around the bush for sometime, and then come back to this tactical question.

“I enjoy writing. I feel like I am good at it. Then why do I have such a hard time sustaining this habit?”

It was 5 AM the morning, and I was tired beyond explanation. I took an executive decision, said..

“Life got in the way, and I can figure this out when I wake up”..

..and fell asleep.

To my surprise (and joy), I was not over this internal dialogue in the morning. I pondered this subject for a couple more hours and realised that I was not the only one facing this problem. I am certain we can all think of a multitude of similar examples, and honestly, we may not even need to go very far to find them. I have had friends and family members pick up a hobby or a habit which they find enjoyable or at the very least, relaxing which they are good at, only to find themselves struggling to keep it up. 

When prompted for a probable root cause for why we can’t keep up these hobbies, we get (and give) answers which lie in one of three categories more frequently than others.

1. Life got in the way
2. I am not good at it
3. It is not fun anymore

All of these reasons sound perfectly fine to us. Life does sometimes get very busy leaving us with little to no energy to engage in anything else. We can also realise that we are not as good at something as we initially thought we were. And finally, we are perfectly likely to lose interest in things.

But just to play the devil’s advocate, let’s break these down in further detail: 

1. Life got in the way: Here’s a question: does life really get in the way or do we get in the way of life? Life is always moving. We are the ones that decide to stop. Wouldn’t planning ahead be helpful in keeping up with things we genuinely want to prioritise in life?
2. I am not good at it: Hardly ever has anyone become remarkably good at something in a couple of days or even weeks. The general rule of thumb is spending 10,000 hours of practice before we can claim expertise at anything. Before quitting something we enjoy, wouldn’t it make sense to do a quick review of whether we have spent the amount of time we should have spent to improve our performance?
3. It is not fun anymore: Is it not fun because we don’t enjoy it, or it’s not fun because basics just don’t cut it anymore? More often than not, it is the latter. In his book called “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience”, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues that the human mind can attain the flow state only when the task at hand is just challenging enough to keep us engaged. Over time, all skills become difficult. We can say the same thing anytime the task at hand becomes harder than what we are comfortable processing.

Finding a talent in oneself is fortuitous. We should consider ourselves very fortunate if we are able to identify and exercise a talent.

Here’s why:

There is  a reason talent and talented people are revered across domains. Talents are innate. We either have a talent or we don’t. However, we have to find a talent for us to be able to use it, right? And that happens with conscious and consistent effort towards self-exploration and practice. 

We have innumerable examples of people realising their talents far too late in life. But when they realised those talents, maintained interest and consistent efforts, the results are undeniable.

In my humble opinion, it is our duty to continue to develop the identified talents. In not doing so, not only are we denying ourselves the potential of happy execution, but we are also depriving of the people around us to see us be happy, and potentially motivate them to find their own talents.