Stop Lying to Yourself. You’re Not Untalented, You’re Just Lazy
Anonymous
You’re not stuck because you lack talent—you’re stuck because you fear how bad you’ll be at the start.We often blame "lack of time" or "lack of talent" to avoid confronting our fear of being terrible at something new.
The Comfortable Lie
Stop lying to yourself: skill emerges from time spent failing and learning.
Here should be a doodle that illustrates someone procrastinating while a big clock looms overhead.
Most people blame their inability to learn on anything but the real cause: they don’t want to look incompetent for the days, weeks, or months it takes to improve. Talent is just how others describe your thousands of hours practicing in obscurity.
You can pretend it’s about “motivation” or “inspiration,” but it’s not. It’s about rolling up your sleeves and embracing the messy, unglamorous grind.
Suck Early, Suck Often
When I was seven, I learned this the hard way: a beloved computer game died, and I had no one to fix it for me. It took months of blind poking around .ini files and archaic settings, but eventually I revived it. That’s when I realized how failure teaches you to see patterns in the chaos.
The same with singing: my first attempts were embarrassing squeals—fueled by a stubborn crush on Trent Reznor. The only reason I improved was because I was willing to sound awful until I didn’t.
The Talent Myth
“Wow, you’re so talented. I wish I could do what you do.” That phrase used to infuriate me.It’s a common reaction: people see the end result, not the thousands of late-night sessions that built it.
People often hide behind “talent” to avoid facing how much work is needed. If you hand them the step-by-step process, they just make excuses. The truth? They can—they just won’t.
Skill isn’t magic; it’s patience with your own failures.
Seeing in the Dark
Failure is not a verdict but a flashlight in pitch-black space. Each mistake reveals another edge or corner, slowly mapping out the shape of the unknown. Over time, you move fluidly where you once stumbled.
What outsiders call “magic” is really just thousands of bruises guiding you through what used to be a mystery.
Move Beyond Excuses
Break old patterns and embrace real growth. Our personal coaching sessions help you:
- Face self-deception head-on
- Convert failures into stepping stones
- Build unshakable confidence
Systems, Not Motivation
Motivation is fleeting. Systems are consistent. I once forced myself to write an hour a day, no excuses. The first few weeks were torture. Then my brain adapted—it got used to producing, even if it was bad at first.
Fail Smarter
On the piano, every “wrong” note taught me what people expected to hear. Sometimes you lean into that dissonance deliberately, surprising your audience. That’s the difference between a clumsy mistake and a deliberate twist.
Embrace mistakes, observe the patterns, and soon you’re not just avoiding errors—you’re harnessing them.
Shut Up and Get Back to Work
The world isn’t split into the talented and untalented; it’s divided between those who do and those who excuse.
If you’re unwilling to be terrible today, don’t bother dreaming about being great tomorrow.
Failure hurts—there’s no sugarcoating it. But it’s how you see in the dark, how you learn the layout of an unfamiliar world. So accept the bruises, own your bullshit, and get to work.