How to Find a Talent

Stop waiting for talents to appear. You can’t know if you’ve got a talent for guitar if you never try to play guitar. Ditto didgeridoo, knitting, badminton, and Tuvan throat singing. Find a talent that seems cool and learn everything you can about it. Find out what it takes and see what you've got. If you never try, you'll never know. You’re not going to find a talent without trying. You can only find your natural abilities, skills, and talents when you test your mettle and actively seek new experiences. Face down obstacles and seek out challenges to see what innate skills and abilities you might be hiding.^[1]

• Make it your goal to try something new every week. You might not discover something that you're super-talented at, but maybe you pick up a guitar one day and find out it feels comfortable in your hands and decide to learn more. Maybe you discover an ability to connect with animals at the shelter, something you'd never experienced before. Maybe you learn you're an ace at the Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball machine at the laundromat. That's the start of talent.
• Get outside and scrape your knees. Go on adventures and experience the world in its natural habitat. Try out different sports, outdoor hobbies like fishing, hiking, and climbing to see if you've got an untapped natural ability or an instinct for it.

Try things that are easy. What comes naturally to you? What do you do without thinking? What do you love? Look to your obsessions and your interests for the possibility of talent. If you love to spend all day doodling, reading, or dancing, there's no point in wasting time wishing you had a talent for baking. Focus on the talents you do have by focusing on what comes easiest to you.^[2]

• If you're in school, what homework comes most easily to you? What worries you the least? That might clue you in to natural talents.
• Pay attention to what other people might have noted about you. It’s common that others might have a keener sense of what you're good at than you will yourself. Ask your family, your friends, and your teachers to help you figure out what you make look easy.

Try things that are hard. Does the stage frighten you, or maybe public speaking? Writing a story and finishing it? Grab the mic and put pen to paper. Do what scares you. What would be your bucket list talent? What would you love to be naturally good at, without trying? Face down big challenges and find out what it takes to be good at them.

• Start learning everything you can about different talents and skills to demystify the process. Shredding an electric guitar like Hendrix might look impossible, but if you don’t know a G chord from a flatpick, you don’t really have any clue how hard it is.
• James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader and noted Shakespearean actor with a booming, godlike voice, suffered from terrible stuttering as a child. He was terrified of speaking in class and only learned to speak properly by facing his fear. Now, he’s widely recognized as one of the most talented voice actors in the world.

Follow your obsessions. What are other people tired of hearing you talk about? What do you have to drag yourself away from? Use the things you're obsessed with to discover abilities and talents that might be hiding under the surface.^[3]

• Even if you’re obsessed with something that’s hard to connect to a talent, like watching television or movies, give yourself some credit. Maybe you have a talent for telling stories, or analyzing narratives. Maybe you have a talent for appreciating camera angles. Every film critic gets a start in the exact same way. Channel that obsession into learning about film history and learning how movies are made.

Keep track of little successes. If you're feeling talentless, maybe it's because you've been missing out on your own successes. Try to pay close attention to successes, both little and big, to identify things for which you might have a natural talent. Think creatively about how these little successes might connect to more significant talents and abilities.

• Maybe you've just thrown a killer party. Might not sound like a talent, but if you've got the people skills, the planning, and the organization abilities necessary to pull it off, celebrate that as a success. Maybe you have leadership talents and managerial skills that will prove useful down the road.

Ignore the television. Shows like “American Idol” and "Britain's Got Talent" have very narrow definitions of what it means to be talented. If you’re not an attractive young person with a manufactured sob story and a loud, showy singing voice, these shows all lead people to believe they’re untalented. It’s not true. Being talented doesn’t mean being famous, being attractive, or being some kind of performer. It means dedication, creative thinking, and attention to detail. It means you have an insatiable curiosity to develop some innate abilities into skills. You've just got to find them.