Is it natural talent

 

When my son was walking off the stage as his band finished a set, a fan said to him, “You are great! You have so much natural talent.”

He told me that story later and it  made me laugh, because my son has practiced up to six hours a day for the past 10 years.

My son then talk about how he now believes that you can be good at anything if you are willing to practice. His own growth in music has allowed him to develop a growth mindset. A growth mindset, as defined by psychologist Carol Dweck, is the belief that your intelligence and talents can change—they aren’t fixed.

No one has a growth mindset in everything. I think of a growth mindset as two voices in my head. One of them takes failure personally, while the other explains to me that I can learn from this failure. The challenge is to allow the second voice to win.

I then asked my son what happens when he plays a bad set or something below his standard. He said that it would be a springboard to help him get better. That he would know what he needed to practice, and that is what he would be doing for the next week. I have witnessed (heard) him practice one line in a song for hours until he felt he had it correct.

The challenge for all of us is to look at failure as an opportunity for growth. When we get something wrong, we should smile, because we are going to learn from the mistake.