But to figure out why this is the way to go, especially when the thing we have been doing doesn’t seem to work.
Adam Grant wrote the story about Steve Martin in his book, Hidden Potential. The comedian was miserable in the early days of his career. No one laughed at his jokes. Because he hated writing, he borrowed other people’s material and improvised onstage. It wasn’t until years of struggling at stand-up, he realized that he had to write his own jokes. Not only writing made him go beyond his comfort zone but also helped him learn and grow as a performer – it forced him to trim the fat down to “the bare bones" of things he wrote about. He learned how to develop killer punch lines, a key skill for the comedian's success later.
Practice is the way to hone our craft and skills. But what kind of practice we need is the real question.
Just like finding your superpower, your practice – the one thing that you need to hone eventually brings everything else out for you can be tricky. Often our superpower gets to surface and shine only after we overcome the biggest hurdle we face.
If you don’t think you have discovered it yet, it’s possible to find it by identifying your biggest challenge, just like Steve hated writing and tried all he could to avoid it for years.
Knowing what it is requires courage and honesty. And it's possible to see it through the lens of learning.
