Bjorn Borg, master of the wooden tennis racket š
In the early 1970s, menās tennis was dominated by Americans.
In your wildest imagination you would not believe that a Swede would change all that.
The name of this Swede was Bjorn Borg.
In less than 10 years, Borg made an entire country ātalented.ā
Some of the most impressive tennis players like Mats Wilander, Stefan Edberg and dozens of other players sprouted from the Swedish woodwork.
About the same time, a woman called Martina Navratilova surfaced from Czechoslavakia. She too, started winning everything in sight.
And then, magically, the Czechs became talented.
The very same phenomenon surfaced in India
Before the year 1985, the Indian cricket team was considered to be a second-class cricket team.
Then from nowhere, they rose to win the World Cup against all odds. And from then on, youād be slightly mad if you had a one-day tournament, and didnāt have the Indian team as an active participant.
What causes an entire country to suddenly be talented in a sport?
Surely it canāt be inspiration. If it were inspiration, then any one from any country could simply be inspired to do the same.
You see thereās quite another factor at work.
Itās called pride.
Or a lack of wimpiness
Because so-called talent requires hard work. Thereās not a single ātalentedā musician who doesnāt put in many, many hours of hard work. Thereās not a single speaker, dancer, writer, athlete, teacher who simply ambles in, and oozes talent.
Talent is the culmination of so many factors, that it almost seems magical.
And unique.
And thatās because we see the expression of talent in a matter of minutes. We see a person draw a cartoon in a few seconds; write an article in an hour; play a difficult piece of music in a matter of minutes. And they seem to be so talented.
Yet the reason we arenāt talented, is because weāre wimpy.
Most people give themselves the permission to be untalented.
And we donāt have to look to the Bjorn Borgs or Martina Navratilovas to find so-called talent.
If you look around you, youāll find some families seem to be overly talented.
They seem to be involved in the arts, writing, music and somehow seem to be so very creative.
But stop and think about it for a second.
What stops your kids from being as talented?
What stops you from being more talented?
Itās the stupid, nonsensical belief that people were born with talent.
That one country is more talented than another.
That one family is more talented than yours.
Donāt tell that to the Swedes
Hereās what Bjorkman, himself a world No.4 has to say: āWe were so good that we spoiled everyone at home. There was no way we could keep winning Davis Cups, have No. 1s and Grand Slam singles champions.
We played the Davis Cup semifinals last year and were not even nominated for the top five teams in Sweden. I think people do forget some of the achievements we still create in tennis because they compare everything to the past.ā
And hereās what Bjorn Borg himself has to say:
āWe are struggling with the junior tennis in Sweden, but weāre working very hard to improve that. Theyāre also struggling in Australiaā.
āBut I think this goes in a circle. Sweden produced players for many, many, many years, unbelievable players. Itās impossible to continue to
do that foreverā.
āBut Iām sure Swedish tennis and Swedish juniors, we will be back. But itās going to take quite a few years.ā
Can you spot the wimpy-talk in the language?
Talent doesnāt arise from wimpy talk.
It arises from action. And patterns. And layering. And emotions.
āI thinkā is not a powerful emotion. Itās a doubt.
I think is wimpy.
Recognise that in your own life. Cut out the wimpy talk and get moving towards creating real talent.
Because talent starts with emotion. If you donāt believe you can do it, you never will.
Hi,
First, great column in the Herald fortnightly, and I like the blog too.
I would love to subscribe to your audio, but it appears you only have an ITunes link.
Without wishing to be offensive, this is seriously outdated. Things have moved on in the last five years, and not having a proper feed link is not a good look.
It is like people who continued to use the old CompuServ ’email addresses’ long after the world had moved on!
Many people can’t install ITunes at work – and rightly so, but they are allowed to use other ‘aggregators’.
Please can I persuade you to ‘get with it’ and ditch the old fashioned Apple stuff and use a proper feed provider such as feedburner.com or host it yourself (see how the BBC does it for good practice).
You’ll vastly increase your potential audience – especially amongst business users.
Keep up the good work on the content front!
Thanks,
Alan.
I will take a look and see how it’s done with BBC. We are hosting it ourselves (just for the record). And I do have a Feedburner account. So it’s probably just a matter of putting things in place.
PS: I did find it eventually – it is just the link to ITunes that I would encourage you to change to your XML link.
Good article on wimpy thinking BTW!
Thanks,
Alan.
How do you understand the relationship between “emotion” and “belief”?
If “I think” is wimpy – are you saying a belief is not a “thought”?
There’s something important here, but it seems not quite sorted out, I think š
I haven’t really thought about emotion and belief.
But emotions are more on the spur of the moment.
And beliefs are more long term.
Hi Eric,
When we qualify our opinion with, “T think…” we are admitting the possibility that our opinion might not be ‘correct’.
That is the ‘wimpy’ point (I think!)
However, if we don’t qualify a statement that way, it can also come across as very arrogant and if the message is received in that way, then the content can become irrelevant (as it may be only partically received or not at all).
Maybe a better approach is to make a definitive statement, and then append the following:
What do *you* think?
Alan.
Not exactly sure what you’re asking, Alan.
Oh, I get it.
A definitive statement is definitive.
I don’t think it’s arrogant at all.
If it sounds a bit waffly, then people aren’t sure if they want to back you up.
And if you don’t back yourself up, and others don’t back you up, then it’s likely that you won’t move ahead and develop the talent.
So being wimpy, or even appending thoughts is definitely not the way to go.
A belief is a thought you think over and over and over until somewhere along the line you don’t know where it came from or how it stuck so tight.
Your emotions get tied up in what you believe.
Change what you are thinking and you can change your emotions.
I believe I am talented. I work at being talented. Others reinforce that I am talented. I am rewarded for being talented. I feel talented.
Ergo, you become talented š Good work, Chris.
I don’t quite agree with the believe part.
I have done a lot of things I didn’t believe in.
But I did them anyway.
And I didn’t need any believe at all, I just had an interest. And that interest was enough to get me started.
Because after I got started, I just did it. And when I had done it, I needn’t believe that I could do it. Because I just did it.
I didn’t believe I could paint, but I was interested to learn more. So I’ve painted.
I didn’t believe I could give a speech in public. So I joined Toastmasters and found out it wasn’t that hard to do – after some practice and positive feedback.
A few weeks ago I believed I would never be able to golf (based on a previous experience a few years back). Now I decided to start playing golf anyway. So what I will be able to do in September…?
‘Belief’ is a word in about any language. And there’s no way to measure that word. What you’re calling an ‘interest’ may well be a belief (although a weaker belief). You don’t need to be rock-solid in your belief for you to change things.
When I started out in marketing, I wasn’t exactly sure I was doing the right thing, let alone believing in what I could do. I knew I needed to make the change, and knew that I could make the change if I needed to, and so I simply followed the path.
But the strength of the belief made Psychotactics what it is today. If I’d just decided it was going to be an interest, then Psychotactics would be a lot like my photography skills–just something I do every now and then.