B l o g

Does talent exist? A Personal story

“Do I need talent to learn X?”

I already lost count the amount of times people asked me this question. My thoughts on the topic changed throughout the years. I have tried to read research papers and the opinion of scientists about this topic.

Before we start this conversation, we need to define "What is talent", so that we are all on the same page. For me talent is:

"Innate ability to perform or learn a skill, without any (or very little) previous training."

In short, talent comes from within and not from the outside.

I started my musical journey in music without worrying too much on talent. Since an early age, my parents raised me with a mindset focusing on hard work and for them that was the important thing.

I remember my time as a student, struggling to sing in the choir, not having the best musical ear (failing to recognize basic intervals, chords, cadences) and having rhythmic problems. But I practiced guitar a lot and I got some success in youth competitions. I thought:

“Maybe I´m not talented for music and my ear sucks, but if I practice guitar long enough, people won’t notice my lack of musical talent.”

Later, I started my hobby of learning languages. Now, I speak fluently 7 languages. I´m trying to learn my 8th, but I´m struggling with it. Again the same conversation, people claiming that I was “talented” in learning languages while the only thing I saw where the countless hours of study and practice I put in.

So, I just said to myself: “Ok, talent does not exist. Everyone is wrong.”

And then I started teaching, reading biographies of famous artists and research papers. When Mozart was 5 year old he was already composing simple minuets. When I meet a 5 year old nowadays, many can’t even hold a guitar or sit still in front of a piano. I meet students who naturally sing in tune, have rhythmic sense without any musical training, others struggle to do the same. My belief was questioned.

“What is going on here?”

If talent does not exist, why do some 5 year old with no musical training can already sing in tune, dance and have rhythmical feeling while others does not seem to possess that abbility?

The answer may lie in the household. Some of them are “afraid” to sing or play instruments, because their parents never sang at home or heard any music. I notice that if the mother or the father sings at home and dances with kid, when he comes to the music school at the age of 5, he has already experienced a lot of music. This might be interpreted as “talent”.

But still, this is just an explanation, many research papers dwelve into the same topic asking the same question and there is no scientific consensus on it.

And then, finally, while talking with a friend about religion and belief, I had a breakthrough:

The beliefs you have shape the things you do. Believing in talent simply does not work for me or for teaching my students. It gives you the expectation that “it should be easy.” “it should be natural.” As a Portuguese speaker, speaking German is far from being natural to me, but I do it anyway. And I struggle with it everyday. And I just accepted that as a fact of life.

Let’s say a student comes to me having problems in learning a certain piece. I´m there with them facing the difficult passages, trying out fingerings, trying to change the way of holding the guitar. Despite the problems, I´m making my best and trying to motivate them to practice. This comes from my belief that “talent” does not exist. I don’t want to use that word or think about it, because for me it feels like an excuse for “lack of practicing”. This mindset makes me practice harder and achieve results.

I have students who try to practice a certain guitar piece for a week and then they tell me: “I practiced for a week. I followed your instructions. It didn’t work. This is the proof I am not talented.”

This thought and obcession with talent leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead of expecting problems and difficulties, you expect things to be easy.

My response was:

“I´m sorry to hear that and that you feel that way. But expecting to learn a piece of that level of difficulty in a week is unrealistic. This is hard and it’s not by practicing one week that you will see major improvements. The improvements are very small and incremental. You have to compare yourself with what you played one year ago, not one week ago. Do you play better now than one year ago? I think you do! That’s like me going to the gym for a week and expecting to be able to run a marathon! Maybe after one year of going to the gym consistently, I might be able to run said marathon.”

I get emotional about this, because I see everyday the emotional damage of certain beliefs. Maybe the people are right, maybe my student is right, maybe talent does exist and I´m just believing the wrong thing. But, by not believing in talent, it empowers me and makes me move forward.

What does this have to do with Religion and why did I have that breakthrough?

Very similar discussion. The existence of God will never be proven or disproven. It is pointless to spend time discussing “existence vs non-existence”.

I met religious people who, because of their belief in God, are philantropists. They donate to charity and do good upon others everyday. I also met religious people who, because of their belief in God, discriminate against LGBTQ people or others who don’t follow the “path of God”.

I think if believing in something makes you do good things, you should have that belief, regardless of it being true or not. If I see my philantropist, religious friend doing good things and then he tells me: “I donate to charity and help others because that’s the path that God traced for us.” I would never question that belief, because that belief leads to so many good things.

But I have a LGBTQ friend who has a very religious mother and that got expelled from home because of being homosexual. When I talked with said mother, she spent the afternoon telling me about the “word of God”, the “message of the Bible”, how she is right in expelling my friend from the house. At that moment, it is my ethical obligation to question her belief in God, because it is bringing harm in the world.

My philantropist, religious friend told me: “If she really believed in God and read the Bible carefully, she would not think like that. She is not a real believer. That is not the real message of God.”

This counterargument is called the “No True Scotsman fallacy”. It can also be called the "appeal to purity". It is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample.

"What?"

Usually it is easier to understand it if we use examples:

Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge."
Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

In our example:

Person A: "No religious person would discriminate against LGBTQ."
Person B: "But the mother of my friend is religious and discriminates against LGBTQ.”
Person A: "Yes, but no true religious person would discriminate against LGBTQ."

Your beliefs lead you to certain actions. Two different people read the same book, believe in the same religion, however behave in a very different way. It is like you put the same line of code in two different computers and they spit out different results. Humans beings are much more complex than what we think. I find this a fascinating topic.

If believing in “talent” is making my student not working hard enough, I have to question the belief. I think it is my obligation as teacher to do so.

Therefore, learn how your “internal computer” works. Choose the beliefs that produce the best output. Do not worry if they are true or not, the important thing is the output that those beliefs produce.

"Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny." Mahatma Gandhi