I've long thought that many talents were not so much gifts or genius but hard work or social or family expectations. Either someone decided that he or she wanted to excel at something and worked at it with or without help or a family or other social group had expectations of skills and help nourish the development of those skills.
Why is it certain groups have large numbers of singers and others have so many people afraid to open their mouths? Why is it those who dabble in foreign languages keep expanding their knowledge and others just say they were never good at foreign languages?
I was encouraged again in my own endeavors by David Brooks' column, "Genius: The Modern View", New York Times, 2009-04-30 and republished in the Star Tribune earlier this week.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/opinion/01brooks.html
He singles out Mozart as not that special to begin with. He copied others' works and he was not that great a musician at an early age. He did have an excellent teacher who had high expectations and spent more time with his pupil than most teachers can, namely his father. Brooks said the young Mozart got his 10,000 hours of practice in at an early age.
Ten thousand hours of practice is what many say is needed to gain mastery of a subject. But not just any practice, but deliberate practice. One works on one's weak spots rather than practice the same thing over and over again.
I'm finding that I just can't sing pieces over and over again. I have to work on the weak spots to improve them. I found this also in memorizing the words. I've been stuck knowing only the first verse to "Padmoskoviya Vechera (Moscow Evenings)" for a long time. I started not looking at words to the second verse for longer and longer sections. I now have only one syllable to get right! Maybe tomorrow I'll start on the third piece.
I also find that I don't learn foreign languages unless I have some strong motive and lots of practice. I've made several attempts to learn Japanese, but I only extend my vocabulary a bit. I'm a long way from holding any meaningful conversation.
The next time anyone says, including yourself, "I was never any good at ...", remind them or yourself that you either weren't interested or weren't taking the time to learn the skill.
See also "Talent is Overrated" by Jim Citrin and my web pages "You can speak foreign languages" and "Mind your mind: it's a gold mine".
