When Talent Stops Carrying You

Up until high school, I never had to study. Then I got my first Algebra 1 test back. I barely passed.

There’s going to be that point in life where natural talent isn’t enough anymore. This is when things actually start to matter, and you have to do a little extra work to move forward.

I first noticed this change when I got to the freshman year of high school. Particularly when I got to my first Algebra 1 class. Now I was relatively good at math; it was my second-best subject, with the first being English. So I felt confident about my first year of high school math. Then I got my first test back and got a 65. For the first time in years, I wasn’t one of the smartest kids in the room. I didn’t really do any studying or note-taking for the first topic. I thought my memorization would get me through the year. So I decided to start writing down everything and summarizing it in a way I could understand, then go over it at night to make sure I understood the topics rather than just memorizing them. Although this got me through the year more consistently, it still felt annoying that I even had to study in the first place.

I’ve also experienced this shift outside the classroom. For me, it was when I moved to a new jiu-jitsu gym. I was at the point where I was beating everyone up in my current gym, and decided to move somewhere else to start competing. So we moved to this new gym that has all the young world champions. Everyone there my age had won the biggest title an athlete could win, and obviously, I wanted to do that too. I began training there about a week after my first visit, thinking I was on the same wavelength as these guys. Looking back, I had no idea the size of that gap. During my first round, I got submitted with a technique I’d never seen before. I didn’t even understand what happened. I knew I wasn’t on this kid's level, and I felt discouraged. I almost quit the sport that day. What was the point of continuing if I was so far behind everyone else? Then I talked with my dad, who experienced something similar back when he played basketball. He said that I shouldn’t focus on the fact that I’m behind, but on how I can get ahead. I was finally being challenged, and I had some work to do.

You should always be improving no matter what you’re doing. If you’re not being challenged, you’re not growing. If I had never studied for any of those tests last year, I would’ve failed math because I thought I was smarter than I actually was.

People usually quit when they get to this point, particularly because they don’t want to do the work that comes with it. This is one of the reasons most teen side hustles die out. They start small, work their way up, and eventually, get to that shift. They see that the workload increases, and they don’t want to do any of it, so they just give up.

If you aren’t able to do the work, you aren’t going to succeed, whether it’s school, sports, a job, or something else. I used to think things would get harder because I just wasn’t good enough. But now I know it’s because I got to the level where I had things to learn.

Learning to challenge yourself during your day-to-day life helps turn your worst weaknesses into your greatest strengths. When something gets harder, it has nothing to do with you; it just means that you have something to work on. It doesn’t have to be immediate progress, but at the same time, you have to keep trying to improve, no matter what.

Don’t quit on something you love just because you don’t want to do the work. You should quit when you feel like you’ve overcome every single challenge thrown at you, and there is nothing left. You’ve reached your peak, and it’s time to seek new challenges.

If I’m not the best in the room—I’m not going to leave.