Everyone is not born special, but we all can become special

The tagline "Everyone is special" sounds very good to hear. It is meant to be motivational and inspiring for all of us. This term is heavily overused, especially by motivational speakers who use this a lot. But is it really inspiring? Or it is very confusing or even misleading? Many speakers who use this term want to make people feel good, they want their audience to think that every one of them is equipped with special qualities and they should feel very proud about it. Actually, if we use the biological criteria, we all are unique, our fingerprints are different, we have different retina patterns, and everyone's genome is unique. So, in many ways, we all are unique and special but that is not what this "special" means. It hints that we all have some special talent or quality that makes each one of us a uniquely gifted person. I think this is not entirely true. Such statements sound very sweet and are made with extremely good intentions to motivate us or to make us feel better, but I feel many times they are misleading.

Many of us fail to acquire any noticeable special talent when we complete our education. We acquire some professional degree or certificate, but not each one of us can claim that we are specially gifted in that area. We can list various reasons for this, we can even blame the school system for not providing a very conducive environment to spot and groom any such special talent and this is what happens with most of us. Actually, very few people are born with some unique talent. Very few of us can understand very early in life about our special talent, if we have any. It is not easy for many of us to figure out our true interests and start working passionately towards some definite goal very early in our lives. Not everyone can become a dancer and singer like Michael Jackson, a basketball player like Michael Jordon, a cricketer like Sachin Tendulkar, or a singer like Lata Mangeshkar or Elvis Presley. There are very few people like them who realize very early in their life about the mission of their life and work tirelessly towards it. Most of us struggle to find the actual area of interest where we can utilize our skills. Many of us struggle even to realize what type of unique skills we have. For most of us, it is a very long journey to figure out the area where we can excel. Our education system, society, and many times our parents make us fit into various stereotypes and try to guide us to what they think is good and proper for us. This leaves most of us thinking about various options at various stages of our lives. Some of us might think being a doctor is a great idea just because our parents are very successful doctors. Some of us might think being a lawyer or an engineer or an actor or politician is a great option without even evaluating whether we possess all the required set of qualities to be successful in that profession. I strongly believe that no matter what area or profession we choose, we can become successful in that area by working hard. It requires lots of hard work, patience, and practice to achieve success in any field unless you have some legacy advantage. Even all so-called naturally gifted people from every field practice hard and go through rigorous training to achieve phenomenal success in their respective fields.  Malcolm Gladwell has written about this phenomenon very nicely in his book 'Outliers', the chapter about the '10,000-hour rule' is a very interesting read, he has tried to explain the importance of practice to master any technique or talent we want to acquire.

I believe that even though we all are not born special, each one of us can become special through our hard work and perseverance. We all can acquire greatness, it is not a gift or genetic trait that we either possess or don't possess but it is an achievable thing. Just by thinking we are special, we might feel good about ourselves, but to achieve it we need to work hard. Even a natural gift or a talent without proper practice and hard training can only help to a limited extent. We need to put a lot of effort into achieving our dreams. Let's work hard to achieve that specialness. We may not be special today but definitely, every one of us can become special through our hard work and perseverance. 

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]