Talent is overrated!
Let me tell you that the aforementioned (I love that word) statement is the title to Geoff Colvin's book which has freed me to realize that I'm okay even though I have no talent for anything. Yea!! The premise of the book is that world-class performers in anything from music to golf to business aren't born with talent. They aren't endowed with some inalienable right to talent that you and I, okay I, don't have. Mr. Colvin has looked at extensive research and come to the conclusion that God just doesn't hand a "world-class" talent to someone and let others go lacking. He believes strongly that people get really good at what they do by what he calls "deliberate practice."

Deliberate practice is what Tiger Woods (PGA golf), Jerry Rice (pro football Hall of Fame), Warren Buffett (business and investment guru), and Mozart (world-renowned music composer) all have in common. It is hours and hours of practice on their "trade." But its how they practice that makes the difference. Here are a few of their secrets:

• They practice alone. Doing this allows them to think about what they are doing. It forces them to do it with no distractions (like other people) that would take them off their practice task(s) for that session.
• They practice the things they don't do well. They analyze the way they do things and decide which parts of their game or business they don't do well and work on them. They don't continue to hit a nine iron from 150 yards on flat ground if they already do that well.
• They practice the things they may only use once or twice over a long period of time. Tiger Woods would practice on buried lies in a bunker. Knowing he may only encounter this problem on one shot of one four day tournament, he still would spend a whole practice session hitting only those shots.
• They practice over and over again. We all have heard that "practice makes perfect" and research seems to prove that out. There is a cumulative effect that is beneficial. Your brain remembers hitting the ball correctly over a period of times and helps you "groove" your swing. Your muscles develop a muscle memory that makes repetitive actions "second nature." Your past business successes and failures gives you a bulk of knowledge on which to build new concepts.
• They do the things that aren't fun. It would be a whole lot more fun to go and play a round of golf than go to the driving range and hit a bucket of balls concentrating on hitting the five iron only. It would be a lot more fun to play a piano piece that has been mastered than it would to play thirty minutes of scales concentrating specifically on an E flat major scale over and over again.

We started track practice yesterday. I am Coach Tigue's assistant distance coach. We coach cross country in the fall and the middle distances (800 meters, 1600 meters, and 3200 meters) during track season. Distance runners are not born. Certainly they may have a unique combination of fast twitch and slow twitch muscles in their make-up, but primarily distance runners are made through disciplined, dedicated practice. We rely a lot of our runners logging the miles. Miles that are many times run alone, day after day, in the heat of the summer and cold of the winter. Alone...over and over again...when its not fun.

Hebrews 12:1 tells us to "...run with perseverance the race that is marked out for us." A distance race is a race of speed to a degree, but more so it is a race of endurance. Of staying on the course to finish the race, a very long race. In John 15:5 (KJV) Jesus tells us that he  is the vine and we are the branches and if we will abide (Greek meaning: abide, remain, dwell or enduring) we will bear much fruit. In light of our earlier discussion look again at those two verses and notice that perseverance and abide both require the deliberate practice and all the elements that make it up.Don't see the correlation? Well, to treasure Jesus daily we need to be willing to go it alone. There must be a quiet time with only Him. To persevere in loving and following Jesus we must "practice" His presence and meditate on the Gospel when things aren't going well. Our abiding is a moment by moment, day by day, month by month practice that we do over and over. Finally, we have to admit that before we can get to the point where we treasure Jesus more than anything else there are times when that pursuit is just not fun but we continue to work on it everyday.

Hey! Didn't you here that whistle? It's time for practice. Let's get after it!