When You Suck at What You Love

Wouldn't it be great if we were all amazingly talented at what we loved?

If we loved singing and every note came out like Lady Gaga?  Or if our love of baking manifested in a talent like Duff Goldman's?  Or if our passion for writing was paired with a talent like J.K. Rowling?

Well, for some lucky people they are very good at what they love.

Take my oldest daughter, for example.

She loves drawing.  And boy is she talented!

She can look at something and just put it there on a piece of paper.  She works at improving all the time but she seems to have started out form a pretty great place.

But my youngest daughter did not start out from a pretty great place regarding her passion.  She actually sort of sucked.

My youngest daughter is a great example of the power of practice. As I have mentioned before, she loves dance. She dances at least 20 hours a week but it’s really more if you can’t all the dancing she does around the house or in the street or in the supermarket. But a few short years ago, she kind of sucked at dancing. Her balance was bad and her arms were wiggly and her feet were sickled. But she loved it. And she worked at it. She took more classes and private lessons and went to summer intensives. She watched videos and looked at pictures and watched the older kids. She really put in the practice and today she is a beautiful dancer.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, (a must read, I must say!) he explains that you need 10,000 hours of practice to be an expert. And in my eyes, there is only one way to get in 10,000 hours of practice. You have to love it. It has to be your passion. Because that is a lot of time to spend on something you don’t really like.

And the fascinating thing about practicing is that 10,000 hours of practice will probably not make you the best in your passion but it will allow you to find your sweet spot, what you are uniquely good at within your passion.

And every year my little dancer grows so much faster and farther than the year before. The practice has made her technically better and has helped her to discover her unique gifts as a dancer. She is now the leader in dances. She places really well at dance competitions. And she is currently one of the youngest dancers performing with a new contemporary ballet company. The practice is really paying off and no more can anyone say that she sucks at what she loves. She is really pretty darn good!

So practice. Do your passion, Watch videos about it. Read books. Hang out with people who also love your passion. Take classes. If you truly love it, all of this will feel like play and not work! And through all that play, you will become much more capable.