In today’s world, good (not
extra-ordinary) talent is ample. Hence, gone are the days when people could afford
to act pricy because of a rare skill-set they possessed – which might have been
inculcated during their education or maybe it was hereditary. Without working
in an appropriate fashion, a gifted individual can literally squander his life.
As a result, today, we understand the importance of hard-work for staying
competent, more than ever before.
Now, let’s come to another crucial
point. We are cognizant of the fact that a talented and a hard-working person has
the ability and the capability to walk that extra mile – that extra mile which,
in Zig Ziglar’s words has no traffic jams. But, there is not just one path,
instead, there are multiple paths. Neither hard-work nor talent can help you choose
the path. They’d help you succeed once you choose the path, not a horribly
wrong one though. Or else, you’d be that fish who was considered stupid because
it couldn’t climb a tree, and never realized that it was not supposed to.
Going forward, because of such a
huge competition in most of the fields and also because of mind-boggling
diversity of these fields, people spend more time in analyzing choices today
than ever before. They make a choice that in expectation would involve maximum
application of their skills and will lead to a proportional reward, in monetary
terms and as well as from the perspective of job satisfaction. Once they choose
the path, they shift gears and go full-throttle. There is a high chance that
good talent and hard-work will lead you to a good life. But, does the story end
here?
You just chose the start of the
path. Where did the path lead? How did you wish your journey to be? How receptive
were you to the choices that came your way in forms of intersection with other
paths or opportunities to create new paths? It makes a lot of difference
eventually. Nurturing a vision is irreplaceable, and it cannot be compensated
with just good talent and hard-work. You should be a prospective thinker. If you
can envision your journey in space and time, and the impact of your choices,
culmination can be pleasantly surprising and different from a mediocre outlier,
i.e. an outlier among outliers – a true outlier.
