It would be so great if I could be good at BLANK.
But alas, I’m not good at blank. Some people are just born with talent and I wasn’t. There is no hope for me…
Today’s secret for an awesome life is: talent isn’t born, it’s grown.
That’s the subtitle to Daniel Coyle’s book, The Talent Code.
When it comes to you and what you can achieve in your life
Anything is possible!!
I know your cynical mind might go where mine goes
Not, anything Joey. I can’t be an olympic gymnast. They start training at like 4 years old.
Yeah, don’t let your brain do that!
You probably don’t even want to be a gymnast, so why bring it up??
When it comes to the skills and talents that you want to develop, you can do anything
Especially because you’re at a young age with your whole life ahead of you!!
So anything is possible is more true for you than it is for me
There ain’t no way I’m becoming an olympic gymnast.
This month we are talking about how to get better at anything
Developing talents and skills
Like
Playing a sport
Running
Playing the piano or any musical instrument
Playing chess
Knitting, sewing, or crocheting
Working on cars
Building model airplanes, cars, rockets, etc
Singing, dancing or acting
Doing math, writing, or reading
Talking to other people, telling jokes, being a ventriloquist
Literally anything!!
The main message this month is talent is not just for people who are born with it!
When it comes to develop talent, there are two parts we’ll be covering this month:
The mental side of it and the nuerological side of it
Or in other words, the science and faith of it all
The faith part of it is believing that you can get better
That you can not just improve, but become the best in your field
The science part of it, is how talent is actually created
Yes, you can create talent. Code it, in your brain
If you know how
Lucky for you, I know how
Okay, lucky for us Daniel Coyle who wrote the Talent Code knows how
But lucky for you I read this book and it’s amazing
It introduced me to a little substance called Myelin
Here’s a quick summary:
What happens in your brain when you think a thought, feel angry, or raise your left foot:
The electrical energy in your brain increases, until it crosses a certain threshold called the action potential.
Once crossed, electrons are fired off in one neuron and start traveling towards the next.
Electrons traveling along a certain set of neurons in a certain order lead to you performing a certain action or thinking a certain thought.
But to get from one neuron to the next, the electrons have to travel quite the distance.
To cover it, they use something called axons – think of it as a street connecting two cities.
All of your axons are covered in a fatty, white substance called myelin.
It protects your axons and insulates them, but it does more.
How big the layer of protective myelin around your axons is determines how fast and how accurately electrons can go from one neuron to the next,
and therefore, how good you are at performing the corresponding skill.
When you pick up a new skill, like learning how to drive a car or play soccer, your axons aren’t really streets yet.
They’re more of a path in the woods – it has to be walked on a lot before you can really use it.
More myelin is what turns those paths into streets and the streets into highways.
When your brain is full of myelin thick highways in one particular area of skill, that’s when you are talented