Those who say talent doesn’t matter are liars.

Those who stop at talent are failures.

Federer said it best:

Yes, talent matters. I’m not going to stand here and tell you it doesn’t.
But talent has a broad definition.
Most of the time, it’s not about having a gift. It’s about having grit. In tennis, like in life, discipline is also a talent. And so is patience.
Trusting yourself is a talent. Embracing the process—loving the process—is a talent. Managing your life, managing yourself.
These can be talents, too. Some people are born with them. Everybody has to work at them.

Isn’t it interesting that we often make our best score when we’re not trying to make the best score?

However, there’s something to be said about the fact that you play as you practice.

So, practice well and deliberately.

Once you do, you’ll see it’s not fun. Well, not all the time, at least. But, it has to be done once you enter the level of 1 percenters.

Why? Because only that will enable you to ‘just do’, and not ‘think’.

It’s a job, you say!? Welcome to the real world of professional X (where x is any profession) 😉

If all you do is succeed in each and every thing you do, you just may not be pushing yourself enough.

Failure reveals your true character.

James Clear said it really well:

"The secret to winning is learning how to lose. That is, learning to bounce back from failure and disappointment—undeterred—and continuing to steadily march toward your potential. Your response to failure determines your capacity for success."

It isn’t easy to start a new (better?) habit, routine, diet, relationship. Yet, it’s not the history nor the events that shape our future the most, it’s the outlook, the mindset that we decide to have about them.

Do you feel you’ve given your everything? Do More. It’ll pay off in abundance in due time.

If the only thing you got from reading the book is one new/affirmed idea, it was very much worth your time. Multiply that idea by the number of books you read and all the years you’ll live and you’ll get a perfect compound interest formula (that you’ll often read about as well 😉

I get it.

Sometimes it’s just hard. Like, legit hard. To do.

To do what?

Well, really, anything that’s not easy.

You’re just stuck. You need a break. A break from being stuck.

But guess what?

That’s exactly the time when you need to do it. To do that thing that you’ve been dreading, or stalling or whatever.

These moments will define you and shape you into a person that does something even when you "don’t feel like it".

It will pay off.

Do it 💪

This is why I write these ‘daily thoughts’ posts.

No matter the level of achievement in external things, mastering oneself is the greatest one.

This is why I write these ‘daily thoughts’ posts.

Learning to write well is a skill that will come useful no matter the industry.

This is why I write these ‘daily thoughts’ posts.

They (supposedly, originally, Heraclitus) say that the only true constant in life is change.

A JavaScript programmer in you might write that like this:

const life = change();

And, the trick in real life is that the function’s implementation regularly looks like this:

function change() {
    return Math.random();
}

However, when you’d try to output the value of the life constant (see it in action in JS Fiddle), it would be exactly that, a constant (no matter how many times you’d call it or output it).

Sidenote: if you’re puzzled by the fact that you can assign a function to a constant (or to a variable for that matter) before it was defined in the code, then go and learn about hoisting in JavaScript.

Now, you may write the above statement like this:

const life = function change() {
    return Math.random();
}

Now, if you call the life function (again, see it in action), it will return a different value every time you call it.

⚠️ JavaScript gurus among you may chuckle at assigning a function to a constant, but check this StackOverflow answer for its applicability – plus, you’ll learn (or, refresh your memory) about hoisting in JS.

Switching gears; the point of all this is that you can’t expect to be doing the same thing, and getting different results, and no matter what obstacles you face, the key to overcoming them is not in changing the event, but in changing yourself and how you react to it. And that itself is a process. A process that begins with the desire or acceptance to be teachable and improve for the better.

Hope you like this attempt at mixing programming with personal growth topics (for more, check my daily thoughts entries).

Stay safe, friends ❤️

This is why I write these ‘daily thoughts’ posts.