I Would Pick Consistency Over Talent Any Day

Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals. — attributed to Jim Rohn

As far back as I can remember, talent has always been sold as the key ingredient to success. I heard that at home, from school and sometimes even in sermons at the church. Basic conversations about success would always project talent as the definite resource to exhibit if one intends to succeed.

Growing up has shattered that image for me. My first experience was with soccer. I understood talent to be something one naturally possessed. Something that came so naturally, without or with very little effort. That was me with soccer. Everyone who watched me play, agreed I was very good at the game. Of course, as it is with everything else, there was bound to be competition. So, it was on a beautiful Saturday that I first came to the realization that perhaps, talent wasn’t all there was in the marathon to achieving success.

It was a soccer match between my high school and another. I was very honored to be made captain of my school team. The thrill that came with leading all those talented people I knew into that match was exhilarating. The other school were coming over as our guests, so it was a home match for us. That advantage alone made us the favorites to win. I sure felt victorious even before the first whistle went off. How wrong I was.

The other team didn’t dribble as much as we did — because boy, we sure were good at that — but they somehow managed to have a better level of ball possession and very smooth method of creating complete passes between themselves. It wasn’t too long into the game, before I realized that my teammates and I spent half of our time on the pitch, running around to try and repossess the ball. The defeat was humiliating! 0–5 in favor of our guests.

Yes, I sulked, and I remember almost crying. It took me a while to understand how a skillful team such as mine, was beaten like that by a bunch of guys who didn’t seem to know how to even juggle the ball. It dawned on me much later after a lot of denial, that I had been too confident in the abilities of my team, I didn’t even call them out for practice till the day before the match! I later discovered that the team we had played against, practiced every single day in the rundown of 14 days to the match, immediately they were informed of the date.

Looking back now, it was obvious I was careless. But without appearing to pass blames, I can only wonder if lessons taught me about the “supremacy of talent” had had some bearing on my approach (or bias if you may), to practice.

I went on to have so many more experiences that disabused my mind on the finality of talent in the pursuit of success. It has been rightly said that success is not a destination as many seem to believe, it is a journey. It is therefore not presumptuous to surmise that consistency has a better shot at success than talent does.

It is true that some individuals have made a name for themselves in their chosen fields through the sheer brilliance of their talents. These people appear to stand out no matter how little they do. However, it is also true that for every single person who is fortunate to become a celebrated success while riding upon the coattails of talent, there are over a score of others who attained such heights and more merely by inhaling the fumes of hard work and consistency with absolutely nothing else to get them by. Sometimes the reason for such scarcity of talented people actually becoming successful isn’t farfetched. Sometimes it is simply because talented people are more prone to falling victim to the villain that is complacency. The teachings of talent being the ultimate function to success is a farce. Unfortunately for those who do have the talent, and who are seduced into thinking that teaching is true, they realize sooner than later that they are content to rely on those talents without putting in the work like their peers do. Sadly, by the time one realizes that, such a person must have already experienced a devastating upset dealt by another who only had hard work and consistency going for them. Thankfully, upon that realization no matter how late it comes in life, such a person could come to learn the value of consistency.

When a talented person attains success, such a person is likely to lose it before long. Complacency would play a major role in that but also, it could be because attaining success is only the first step to actually being successful. Being successful entails that one continues to reach for the stars. It requires constant effort in trying to keep going and working harder at staying up there. Hard work involves identifying the virtues that contributed towards getting such a person to that giddying height of success in the first place. It is all about the continuous effort in honing those virtues and fanning their flames. Consistency. Talent could very well be a means to success. However, consistency is a necessity in achieving it and staying the course in the long term.