TALENT VS EFFORT
Recently I was listening to this podcast about grit and the relationship between talent and effort and which one you really need to be successful at something (short answer is both is best but if you have to pick one, effort is by far the determining factor). This resonated with me and my relationship with freediving.
Since i like to digress, i’ll ramble some about the time i started drawing. I was never really good at it, so one day i decided it was time to fix this sad circumstance, bought a book (it was before internet tutorials were a thing), drawing supplies and i got to work. In a relatively short time i could draw very decently and people would always compliment me for the collection of charcoal drawings hanging on my house walls. And then often they would exclaim “oh, i wish i could draw like that!” to which i used to answer “and you can” and then start explaining how practice is more important than innate talent and i would describe how i learned.
Every single person would dismiss my observation and insist they could never do it and that annoyed the shit out of me. Once i vented about it to my friend and she said “Linda, people dont want to hear that they can do something about it, it’s much easier to tell yourself something is beyond your capabilities so you dont have to actually try”. That conversation really stuck with me.
But then i was never able to apply this concept (effort over talent) to my own freediving until just recently. Despite a VEEERY slow start as a freediver (i was one of these people who cannot equalise head first – for like forever), but i was good at holding my breath without much effort, and once i figured out the equalisation thing i very quickly got to 60, then 70 and then i was very close to the top women. But i wasn’t training at all. I was just diving. Training for me meant “go to the Blue Hole and do a dive 2 or 3 times a week”. So at a point i got stuck. I thought that if i wanted to get to the next level i needed to “push myself” but that i didnt have it in me.
Then i lost interest and stopped, then picked up again 1 or 2 years later just to retrace the same path again. I dont think i realised that skill requires practice and that practice is something entirely different than “go to the Blue Hole and do a dive”. Instead of using my talent to build skill through practice, i let my talent work against me and instead of helping me progressing it contributed to me quitting. Then last year i started training, for real this time, and so many doors opened.
