you WERE born with "it"

I was just saying to a student yesterday... I have this friend who is in awe of all these great writers, and is fond of saying things like, "I'll never write like Herman Hesse, or Sylvia Plath. They were so great."

And I say, "Yes, they are in your eyes now. But when they were sitting down, writing, they weren't trying to be 'great', or trying to be a 'genius'. They were simply doing what they were driven to do. And I'll bet you they thought what they were doing was crap, and they struggled with doubts just as much as we do."

History is full of a legion of writers and artists, etc., who were unappreciated in the time they lived, but were revered afterwards. In our own lifetime, we have amazing writers whose novels were turned down countless times before finally being published and then topping the bestsellers list.

I'm a firm disbeliever in the old adage that you 'have to be born with it.' My challenge to anyone who says that is... how do you know if you are born with it, if you don't do the work to find out? And you do that work because it lights you up inside to do that thing. Your passion becomes your motivation to work, and to practice, and to become. Not so you can be seen by the external world to be 'great' or a 'genius', but because you can't imagine your life without that thing you do that makes you feel alive. And you want to get good at it, and through that process of growth & healing you become more than you ever thought possible for you.

As you walk your path, struggling with your own doubts and trying to learn what you need to know... you become compassionate about the people who are around you, in front of you, behind you, on the same path... because you realize there is no difference between you and them. Yet each of us is special and unique, and has the potential to achieve almost anything we dream of doing. As we are mentored by our more experienced friends, we pass along our knowledge to those less experienced, and it becomes a chain of support & understanding from our extended family of creative souls. No one is an island.

As long as we are born & remain relatively healthy, and have the capacity to listen and learn, then anything is possible. If we are willing to do the work.

I see this in my own studio all the time. I work with singers who cannot sing. They are 'tonedeaf'. They cannot sing on key. Even if you offered them a million bucks, they couldn't do it. You'd say, very adamantly, they are not born with it at all, that they should give up and go do something else. Come back a year or two later. And you'd say... 'this can't be the same person.' You'd be amazed at the stunning voice coming from that supposedly tonedeaf person who couldn't sing on key to save their life.

As long as you are born with the capacity to learn and perservere, have compassion for yourself & others, and grow your conscious awareness so you can balance strength with humility, you have "it".