Friday, December 02, 2011

Can You Grow Beyond Your Talent?

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According to Daniel Coyle in his book The Talent Code – Greatness Isn’t Born, It’s Grown,  “Skill is a cellular insulation that wraps neural circuits and that grows in response to certain signals.” The more time and energy are put in the right kind of practice, the more skill can be developed. So it is definitely possible to grow beyond your talent!

If you want to know more stories on how people develop their skills through right practice, I recommend you to read the book.

Now…I want to share my personal story on this topic.

As you may know from my previous post, I started learning meditation in August 2009. A few months after attending my first meditation retreat, Bali Usada Tapa Brata 1, I re-attended it with my mother in October. When we came back from the retreat, my parents and I went to see Mr. T who had a “supernatural” power and had a discussion about meditation. He asked me why I would practice meditation because I did not have a talent for it. I told him that I found meditation to be beneficial for my emotional health. He said that it was true, yet he warned me not to be disappointed if I could not be successful in developing my meditation skill to higher levels. Since I practiced meditation mainly for my health, especially my emotional health, I kept practicing diligently despite his warning.

In 2010, I started attending Bali Usada Tapa Brata 2 and learned a great deal more. I learned to be more adept in developing my harmonious mind, as well as practicing deeper techniques. At the end of the year, I met again with Mr. T. He asked me whether I still practiced meditation. I told him that I practiced every day for about 45-60 minutes with the method I learned in Tapa Brata 2. He told me that I had a good progress. He was wondering who my teacher was because the teacher had to be a good teacher to be able to teach me to achieve this kind of progress. I told him that it was Mr. Merta Ada who taught me. He just nodded and told me to keep going. I supposed he was curious to see how I would turn out.

Just before I went to Tapa Brata 3 this year, I met with him once again. He did not say anything during our discussion, but when I was going to walk to my car, he suddenly told me that I had been successful in my meditation practice. He told me that I should be able to succeed in my later practice if I decided to pursue it. I was actually quite surprised when he told me this because personally I did not feel so much different in my practice between now and two years ago when he told me I had no talent for meditation.

From my story, you can see how you can still be successful although someone said that you had no talent for it. Skill can be learned by the right kind of practice!

I was actually glad when Mr. T told me that I had no talent because if I was successful, it was because of my effort and hard work. For most of my life, since I was at school until now, a lot of people saw my success and often told me that it was due to my talents and my parent’s supports. They rarely said that it was due to my own effort! I felt fortunate to have a lot of supports and talents, but sometimes I longed to be appreciated for my effort.

With meditation, I can finally prove how I can also be successful based on my own effort. I do not say that I have no support because I do have supports from my teachers and meditation friends, yet they can’t do the work for me, only I can sit and meditate!

How much effort did I put into my practice? Since I attended Tapa Brata 1, I have practiced every single day! Until today, it has been 853 days. I attended Tapa Brata 1 twice, Tapa Brata 2 three times and recently Tapa Brata 3. I also attended two meditation retreats with different teachers. No easy feat but well worth the effort!

I want to see how it will be like when I hit 10,000 hours of practice! I still have a long way to go but I certainly enjoy this journey.

I hope this story can inspire you to keep practicing, keep going, keep developing yourself. Other people can say that you have no talent, but if you really want it, you certainly can grow your skill beyond your talent!

Learn and Grow!

Inge Santoso, B. Com

1 comment:

Purewater said...

Keep growing and never give up! MABBH