Naturally

     He goes for the slam dunk, the ball is rebounded, two seconds left, he tries again for another shot, buzzer goes off, and score!  Bulls win the game.  Michael Jordan makes the winning shot.  Some say he was a natural at basketball, but according to Carol Dweck’s book, “Michael Jordan wasn’t a natural.”  (Dweck, 2008, p.85)  If someone as talented as Michael Jordan was not a natural, what is a natural? 

     The website dictionary.com lists over 30 definitions of the word natural.  The one that fits Dweck’s use of the word is “any person or thing that is or is likely or certain to be very suitable to and successful in an endeavor without much training or difficulty.”  (LLC, 2011)  To a person who has not critically thought about natural ability, Michael Jordan would come to mind as a natural.  Dweck however had a second part to her quote: “He was the hardest-working athlete, perhaps in the history of sport.” (Dweck, 2008, p.85)  With this example and the many others she provides throughout chapter four of Mindset, she insinuates the idea that talents are not natural; they have to be worked with.

     I used to think I was a natural at two things, math and piano.  As a child I always seemed to have a knack for solving math problems.  Numbers made sense to me, and whenever math was taught to me, I would learn it quicker than most everyone else.  However, my parents worked with my math skills me when I was little.  They taught me how to play dominoes, which   consists of constant adding and subtracting.  According to my dad, I was playing with double fifteens at five years old, which is one of the hardest levels of dominoes.  I learned the math quickly, and I built on it from there.  Piano was similar.  Music seemed to come easy to me.  The concept of reading notes and making my hands move accordingly were not a challenge.

     I do not believe I am a natural at either math or piano.  The reason I always thought I was a natural at math and piano were because both were reinforced throughout my whole life.  In elementary, the only academic competition I participated in was Math Field Day.  All the students in my grade would take the same math test.  I won first place for five out of six years.  I was on the Math Field Day team, every year possible (including middle and high school).  In addition, I received many awards.  Nevertheless, if you look back at my report cards, I had good grades in all subjects.  If I applied myself to all of my classes, I could have easily achieved as much honors in my other classes as I did in math.  My talent in math is not “natural;” it was learned like the piano.

     When I was little, my dad paid for piano lessons and would tell me to practice.  When I got older and started to not practice as much, my skills started to slip.  I thought it was because I had too much going on at the time, but really, I was not practicing enough.  I do not have a natural ability of the piano; I had the practice and the support behind me to make the piano work.

     In summary, talents are not natural.  The only things natural are what the body does involuntarily, such as the beating of the heart.  Everyone has to learn how to walk, talk, and eat.  If a child’s parents or guardians’ focus on and try to prefect one attribute of their child, only then will talent appear.

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Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine Books.

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers. New York City: Little, Brown and Company.

LLC. (2011). Natural. Retrieved February 2, 2011, from Dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/natural