8 LESSONS FROM TALENT IS NEVER ENOUGH BY JOHN MAXWELL 

1. Talent Is Not Enough 

"Talent is often overrated and frequently misunderstood. French poet and dramatist Edouard Pailleron pointed out, “Have success and there will always be fools to say that you have talent.” When people achieve great things, others often explain their accomplishments by simply attributing everything to talent. But that is a false and misleading way of looking at success. If talent alone is enough, then why do you and I know highly talented people who are not highly successful?" 

2. Everyone Has A Talent 

"People have equal value, but not equal giftedness. Some people seem to be blessed with a multitude of talents. Most of us have fewer abilities. But know this: all of us have something that we can do well.

In their book Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton state that every person is capable of doing something better than the next ten thousand people. And they support that assertion with solid research. They call this area the strength zone, and they encourage everyone to find it and make the most of it. It doesn’t matter how aware you are of your abilities, how you feel about yourself, or whether you previously have achieved success. You have talent, and you can develop that talent." 

3. Believe In Yourself 

"The first and greatest obstacle to success for most people is their belief in themselves. Once people figure out where their sweet spot is (the area where they are most gifted), what often hinders them isn’t lack of talent. It’s lack of trust in themselves, which is a self-imposed limitation. Lack of belief can act as a ceiling on talent. However, when people believe in themselves, they unleash power in themselves and resources around them that almost immediately take them to a higher level. Your potential is a picture of what you can become. Belief helps you see the picture and reach for it." 

4. Set High Expectations For Yourself 

"We cannot live in a way that is inconsistent with our expectations for ourselves. It just doesn’t happen. I once heard a story that I have not been able to confirm about an aviation pioneer who built a plane the year before the Wright brothers made their historic flight in Kitty Hawk. The plane sat in this inventor’s barn because he was afraid to fly it. Maybe it was because it had never been done before. Maybe it was because he expected it to fail—I don’t know. It’s said that after the news reached him about Orville and Wilbur Wright, the man flew his plane. Before then, he didn’t believe in himself enough to take the risk.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to get things done and those who don’t want to make mistakes. The Wright brothers were of the first type. The would-be aviation pioneer was of the second. If you’re of the first type, then you already expect to believe in yourself and take risks." 

5. Pursue Your Passion with Everything You’ve Got

Rudy Ruettiger, upon whose life the movie Rudy was based, observed, “If you really, really believe in your dream, you’ll get there. But you have to have passion and total commitment to make it happen. When you have passion and commitment, you don’t need a complex plan. Your plan is your life is your dream.”

What do you want to accomplish in your lifetime? How do you want to focus your energy: on survival, success, or significance? We live in a time and place with too many opportunities for survival alone. And there’s more to life than mere success. We need to dream big. 

6. Passion Is the First Step to Achievement 

Loving what you do is the key that opens the door for achievement. When you don’t like what you’re doing, it really shows—no matter how hard you try to pretend it doesn’t.

7. Take Initiative 

When it comes to initiative, there are really only four kinds of people:

1. People who do the right thing without being told

2. People who do the right thing when told

3. People who do the right thing when told more than once

4. People who never do the right thing, no matter what

Anyone who wants to become a talent-plus person needs to become the first kind of person.

8. Focus 

We live in a culture with almost infinite choices and opportunities, and because of that, most people find themselves pulled in dozens of directions. The solution to such a predicament is focus. Poet William Matthews wrote, “One well-cultivated talent, deepened and enlarged, is worth 100 shallow faculties. The first law of success in this day, when so many things are clamoring for attention, is concentration—to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right nor to the left.”