by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Talent is ‘Good’ But It isn’t ‘Ultimate’ (Only Your Relationship With Life Itself Is).
There’s a funny and peculiar thing about being human which is that we can be incredibly ‘good’ at doing things whilst having absolutely no idea how to actually be ourselves.
Here’s what I mean:
We can be talented, successful, entertaining, intelligent, productive, creative, charming, generous, and seemingly everything else that makes a person impressive from the outside whilst also spending years developing our abilities, building our reputations, and becoming the sort of people others look up to…only to find that something still feels like it’s missing when we finally get a moment alone with ourselves.
We might even become so good at performing that we forget there’s a difference between the person we’ve learned to present to the world and the person we actually are underneath it all and this is why we need to distinguish between talent and performance on the one hand and REAL character on the other.
Here’s a quick breakdown:
- Talent is what you can do.
- Performance is how you show up and what you achieve.
- Character is your capacity to accept reality and work with it rather than constantly trying to manipulate it into giving you the validation you think you need.
All three can be valuable but only one provides a foundation for becoming whole instead of fragmented and – if we confuse them – we can spend our entire lives getting better at being somebody whilst never quite learning how to be ourselves.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Why We Get So Attached to Our Talents
Life is confusing and – to make matters worse – nobody gives us a detailed instruction manual explaining who we are, what we’re supposed to do, or how we’re meant to make sense of the strange experience of being alive.
This leads to a situation where pretty much all of us are searching for meaning and most of us are also looking for some kind of validation that we ‘matter’ and have a legitimate place in the world and one of the easiest ways to find this validation is through our talents and our ability to perform.
Maybe you don’t understand everything that’s happening in your life, perhaps you’re not entirely sure whether you’re on the ‘right’ path, whether your relationships are healthy, or whether the things you’re working towards will ever amount to anything meaningful, but if you’re the best guitar player in your friend group at least there’s something you can point to.
Maybe you can write better than anybody else you know…
Perhaps you’re the funniest person in the room, the most intelligent person at work, or the person everybody describes as being unusually kind and generous…
Maybe you’re brilliant at business, exceptionally good-looking, a natural athlete, or simply somebody who always seems to get things done…
Whatever your particular talent or ability happens to be, it gives you something to HOLD ON to that makes life make at least a little more ‘sense’ and so you might not know who you are exactly but at least you know you’re good at something (and if other people recognise that something then that’s even better).
What you’re really holding onto when you see your talents and abilities like this is the evidence that you’re worth something:
You’ve got an identity, a role to play, and a reason to feel a little more secure in an otherwise uncertain world.
Of course, there’s nothing inherently ‘wrong’ with this – developing our abilities, taking pride in our work, and enjoying the things we’re ‘good’ at can all be healthy parts of being human but the problem begins when we turn these things into the ultimate source of our worth and happiness and sop enjoying our talents for what they are and start depending on them to tell us WHO we are.
For example:
- Instead of playing guitar because we love music then we play because being the “best guitarist” makes us feel special.
- Instead of writing because we have something meaningful to express then we write because being a “talented writer” protects us from feeling ordinary.
- Instead of being kind because somebody needs our kindness then we become kind because we need to be known as a “good person”.
- Etc. etc. etc.
In other words, when we put them on a pedestal then our talents become more than just abilities and become psychological survival strategies.
That’s when things get complicated.
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Talent Won’t Save You From the Void
The Void is the experience of being disconnected from truth at the levels of ourselves, from reality, and from the deeper sense of wholeness that becomes available when we stop organising our lives around shame, guilt, and/or trauma (The Unholy Trinity).
When we’re caught up in the Void, we experience ourselves as being somehow incomplete (even though this actually impossible and it’s just a misperception caused by mental and emotional blocks):
There’s a feeling that something is missing, that we’re not quite enough, or that we need to become somebody else before we can finally relax and enjoy being fully alive.
Having ‘talent’ can temporarily distract us from this empty feeling and the success and recognition talent sometimes brings can provide a welcome injection of validation and the impression that we’re finally becoming somebody.
That might be great in the short term but no amount of validation or becoming ‘somebody can ever resolve the underlying disconnection from truth that opened up the Void in the first place:
Think about the classic case of the tortured artist, for example – if talent were all it took to feel real and find our place in the world then we wouldn’t have so many stories of extraordinarily gifted people struggling with chronic and profound unhappiness.
The cultural mythology surrounding the so-called Club 27 phenomenon reflects this contradiction (even if the stories behind those deaths are far more complicated than any single explanation) and we’ve all encountered the funny person who seems to light up every room but privately feels miserable (you might even be that person) or met successful people who can’t enjoy what they’ve achieved – no matter how much external evidence they have that they’re “doing well”.
It’s also likely that we’ve stumbled across people who are so accomplished, ‘successful’, and talented that others are practically worshipping them and yet they treat everybody around them terribly because they’re so tortured and profoundly messed-up in their special talented ways (really, because being ‘talented’ is seen as an excuse to not deal with one’s emotional problems in service of the craft or whatever).
Steve Jobs is perhaps a famous and useful example of the distinction between professional achievement and character here (not that I ever met him): his extraordinary achievements at Apple are well documented as are accounts from colleagues describing his abrasive and sometimes even cruel behaviour.
Whatever we think of his methods, his (alleged) story illustrates an important point:
Being exceptionally talented at building something doesn’t automatically mean you’ve developed the character to relate to other human beings from a place of REALNESS.
In short, you can have a genuine vision and still be an arsehole because the vision doesn’t magically excuse the behaviour – in fact, the more talented you become, the more important it might be to examine your character because your abilities can give you more opportunities to get away with things that would otherwise have consequences.
For example, people may tolerate your arrogance because you’re brilliant and they want to ride your coattails, they might excuse your selfishness because you’re ‘successful’ and they want to be too, and they may even convince themselves that your cruelty is simply the price of being around a genius.
That might all sound great until you start believing your own mythology which is another one of the dangers of putting talent on a pedestal:
The very thing that makes you impressive to other people can become an excuse not to grow real as a human being.
The bottom line is that talent is ‘good’ but it’s not enough and if you treat it as the thing that’s going to save you, sooner or later, the pedestal is going to wobble and you’re gonna come crashing back down to reality.
The Attention Economy: Performing for People Who Don’t Know You
Our culture doesn’t exactly make all of this any easier:
Social media encourages us to turn ourselves into little entertainment products, constantly presenting our abilities, achievements, opinions, bodies, relationships, and personalities for public consumption.
This is because we’re living in an attention economy where clicks, views, ‘likes’, and followers are often treated as evidence of personal value and so the unspoken promise is that if enough people see you, appreciate you, and acknowledge your talents, you’ll finally feel like you matter.
This is why so many of us end up going into performance mode:
We film ourselves dancing in public, demonstrating our extraordinary abilities, making people laugh, showing off our physiques, or doing whatever else might convince the algorithm that we’re worth distributing to a wider audience.
Some of this is harmless fun, some of it is genuine creative expression, and some of it is even a way of making a living but sometimes, what looks like “self-expression” is really a request for the world to rescue us from our own underlying emotional ‘stuff’ – in other words, we’re not necessarily sharing something because it means something true to us but because we want somebody else to tell us that we mean something.
This drive to perform might even cause us to intrude on other people’s space, disrupt their experience, or turn ordinary public life into our personal stage because the need to be seen has become more important than our connection to what’s actually happening around us.
The distinction isn’t whether we perform publicly but whether we’re expressing something real or trying to extract validation from an audience.
After all:
- You can have a million followers and still feel completely alone.
- You can be admired by strangers whilst remaining disconnected from the people closest to you.
- You can spend years building a personal brand whilst neglecting the actual person who has to live behind it.
- Etc. etc. etc.
People stay hooked in these cycles because the attention economy encourages us to believe that our lucky break is just around the corner and so all we need is one viral video, one breakthrough project, or one spectacular achievement and suddenly everything will finally fall into place.
But what happens when it doesn’t? Or what happens if it does – only for you to discover that the Void has followed you all the way to the top?
The key point is that the problem was never that you weren’t talented enough but that you’ve been asking your talents to do a job they were never designed to do.
You Don’t Need Talent to Live a Real Life
So having said all that, here’s the bit that can actually help you to find more freedom in life:
You can have absolutely NO remarkable talent whatsoever and still develop the capacity to live a real, meaningful, and fulfilling life.
You don’t have to be the ‘best’ at anything, you don’t need to impress anybody, and you don’t even need to discover some extraordinary gift hidden inside you (although the odds are that you probably will as you find your real essence and start expressing it – i.e. you get in touch with your realness and take real action).
You can be perfectly ‘average’ at almost everything you do and still keep going deeper and deeper into wholeness as you live your life.
This is because realness isn’t about becoming ‘exceptional’ or ‘special‘ but about about overcoming the fragmentation that keeps us disconnected from ourselves and life.
What this means is that no matter how much or how little talent you have:
- You can still learn to feel your actual feelings rather than suppressing them, distracting yourself from them, or turning them into another self-improvement project.
- You can still accept yourself unconditionally without needing to ‘prove’ that you’re more intelligent, attractive, ‘successful’, generous, or spiritually evolved than somebody else.
- You can still accept life without demanding that it constantly reassure you that everything is going to work out exactly as you want.
- You can still show up for the world in ways that are genuinely useful and real – even if nobody ever writes a glowing review about you.
-Imagine helping somebody because they need help, rather than because you want to be known as a “helpful person”.
-Imagine creating something because you have something to actually express – rather than because you need the finished product to establish your worth or to feed into your self-image (the character you play within the Void).
-Imagine being able to admit that you’re ‘wrong’ about [whatever] without feeling that your entire identity is under attack.
-Imagine enjoying somebody else’s success without needing to diminish it or compete with it because you have a scarcity mindset.
-Etc. etc. etc.
None of these things requires exceptional talent or being ‘special’ in any way, shape, or form – they simply require character which, in the Realness philosophy, isn’t about becoming some morally perfect superhero who always knows the ‘right’ thing to do but about developing the capacity to accept reality and work with it even when doing so is uncomfortable.
Sometimes, this might mean acknowledging a feeling you’ve spent years avoiding.
Sometimes, it might mean admitting that your behaviour has hurt somebody.
Sometimes, it means recognising that the life you’ve been pursuing was built around somebody else’s expectations.
Sometimes, it simply means allowing yourself to be an ordinary human being without interpreting your ordinariness as a personal failure.
You don’t have to become extraordinary to be whole – you just have to become willing to be REAL.
If you want to get more in touch with your realness by embracing reality then check out my book Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness.
Character Over Performance: Three Practical Steps
So how do we take all of these ideas and begin shifting our focus from talent and performance towards character?
Well, as always it comes down to three interconnected movements: Awareness, Acceptance, and Action (these are the transformational steps I build my coaching containers around whilst working with clients).
Let’s look at this in a bit more detail:
1. Awareness: Deconstruct the Ego
The first step is to cultivate Awareness by noticing where your talents and abilities have become entangled with your identity.
You can ask yourself some simple but powerful coaching questions:
- What am I proud of being ‘good’ at and why does it matter so much to me?
- What would I be afraid of losing if I could no longer perform this particular role?
- Do I really enjoy doing this thing or do I mainly enjoy the way people respond to me when I do it?
- Where am I using competence to avoid feeling inadequate, ordinary, or uncertain?
Don’t use these questions to shame yourself for enjoying your achievements!
The point isn’t to destroy your confidence or pretend that your abilities don’t matter but to simply become aware of the hidden bargain you might be making with life:
Perhaps you’ve unconsciously decided that being intelligent means nobody can dismiss you, that being funny means nobody can reject you, or that being helpful means nobody can accuse you of being selfish.
Once you recognise the bargain then you can start questioning whether it actually serves you or not – your talents are things you can develop and enjoy but they don’t have to be the foundation upon which your entire identity rests (that’s your relationship with life itself instead of the Void).
2. Acceptance: Integrate the Shadow
The next step is to practise Acceptance of the ‘parts’ of yourself that don’t fit the image you’re trying to maintain – for example:
- If you’re known as the strong one then can you acknowledge when you’re struggling?
- If you’re the intelligent one then can you admit when you don’t know something?
- If you’re the ‘good’ person then can you face the times you’ve been selfish, resentful, or unkind without collapsing into shame or inventing excuses?
It’s at the ‘Acceptance‘ stage where character develops = not through maintaining an immaculate self-image of perfection or whatever but through becoming willing to face the truth about yourself.
The same also applies to life – for example, you might never become the most talented person in your field, you might not receive the recognition you believe you deserve, or you might discover that a particular ability you’ve spent years developing isn’t going to lead where you hoped.
Can you accept these realities without turning them into evidence that you’re somehow ‘defective’?
Acceptance doesn’t mean giving up on your ambitions but it does mean allowing yourself to see what’s actually happening so that your next move can be grounded in truth rather than desperation.
3. Action: Trust Yourself and Life
Finally, it’s time to start acting from what’s REAL rather than what will make you look ‘good’ and to practise doing things that matter without needing to turn them into performances.
For example:
- Help somebody without mentioning it afterwards.
- Create something without immediately posting it online.
- Have an honest conversation without trying to control the other person’s response.
- Try something you’re bad at and allow yourself to be a beginner.
- Ete. etc. etc.
All of this is particularly important when it comes to the idea of serving others:
There’s a difference between helping somebody because help is genuinely needed and helping somebody because you want the psychological reward of being seen as generous.
The outward behaviour might look identical but the inner relationship with life is different:
In the first case, you’re responding to reality but, in the second, you’re trying to manipulate reality into giving you something – of course, human motivations are rarely perfectly pure and Realness isn’t about achieving some impossible state of motivational purity.
It’s about becoming aware of your motives, though, and accepting their complexity so you can gradually allow your actions to be guided more by truth than by the need to fill the Void.
Keep repeating the cycle: Awareness, Acceptance, Action.
You don’t need to master it once and for all (and none of us ever will ‘master’ it) – you just need to keep returning to it as life gives you new opportunities to become more whole (which it always will).
The Final Word: Stop Trying to Become Somebody. Start Learning to Be Yourself.
One of the strange ironies of personal development is that we can turn the whole thing into another performance:
We start trying to become the most self-aware person, the most emotionally integrated person, the most authentic person, or the most spiritually advanced person in the room which means that we’ve just taken the same old ego-driven strategy and dressed it up in the language of “growth”.
Character isn’t necessarily something you sit around cultivating all day but is most often what naturally emerges when you stop fighting reality and learn to work with things as they are.
It’s less about constructing an impressive identity and more about recognising what’s true and responding to it honestly so that we can say (and mean) perhaps the truest statement a human being can utter:
“It is what it is and I am what I am”.
Ultimately, a real life isn’t one in which you finally become talented enough to deserve your place in the world but one in which you stop treating your place in the world as something you have to earn through constant performance.
The bottom line is that talent can enrich your life, performance can help you express yourself and contribute to the world, but neither can replace the deeper work of becoming whole.
At the end of the day, you don’t need to be impressive to be real – you just need to be willing to face the truth, accept what you find, and act from that place.
That’s where the Void begins to lose its grip and it’s where life can finally become something you participate in, rather than something you spend your entire existence trying to prove you’re worthy of.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to stop performing and to start participating in your life in a real way then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you move forward by taking real action.
Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want.
It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.
Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.
It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.
This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).
Shadow Life is an exploration of the human shadow and the hidden side of our personalities. It looks at the masks we wear, where these masks come from, and how we can take them off.
The book explores how we can better manage our relationships with shame, guilt, and trauma in order to remove the Mask that the world has asked us to wear (and that we forgot we were wearing) so we can live an authentic life with less drama, chaos, or BS whilst we’re still around.
The Flow Builder Journal has everything you need to make the next 21-weeks of your life a turning point.
It has monthly, weekly, and daily (morning and evening) check-ins, tools and reflections to keep you in the zone and keep you flowing with zest and momentum.
If you want to get unstuck and grow REAL then check it out.
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