"Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard."

By Sam Yang - Get similar updates here

It's tempting to believe intelligence trumps everything else. "If only I were a genius" becomes the standard magic answer that leads to everything we've ever wanted. If we don't get the things we want, it's either an effect of not being smart enough or because other people have advantages we don't: rich parents and/or extreme luck. But there's nothing magical about effort and working hard. It's actually a lot of work.

Little Suzie the Math Whiz

Let's imagine we're in a 9th-grade algebra class. It's Tuesday, that's the day our teacher Mr. Johnson promised to give us a test. Well, it's Tuesday and here's the test. As we sweat away, laboring on the meaning of "x"—there's Suzie. She's breezing through it effortlessly, like a concert pianist and her scientific calculator is her piano. She's a natural; and just like that, she's done. We're, however, still on page one.

Suzie has an advantage, a philosophy of life. (Maybe as 9th-graders, we aren't mature enough to be self-aware—though even adults can be oblivious.) Suzie's philosophy is to work hard, stay disciplined, and put in lots of effort. We don't. We even mock effort. "Hey, 'A' for effort," we joke. We don't really have a philosophy unless freaking out is a philosophy, which is not a worldview we've thought-out or picked for ourselves, but a trapping we've fallen into. In reality, however, life is a combination of events we can and cannot control. The default mindset for many is: neither our circumstances nor our expectations are within our control. Neither of which are true nor does it make for a positive outlook on life.

A person with a philosophy of life will be best prepared for life. It provides him or her with a ready course of action for any situation: control circumstances or manage expectations. The ancient Greeks knew the importance of having a proper viewpoint and would send their children to philosophers to receive coherent education. Now, coherent philosophy has been divorced from education; and rather than it being taught at home as a complement to modern schoolwork, schoolwork is only further reinforced at home. Kids get more of the same and are left with a vacuum where a life manual should be. That leaves kids with the risky proposition of figuring it out on their own. (And if you want to see what that's like, read Lord of the Flies.)

The Misevaluation of Little Suzie

Back in our imaginary classroom, Mr. Johnson passes the tests back. He wants us to grade each other's work, and as it so happens, you get Suzie's test. Of course! Mr. Johnson puts all the correct answers on the board, and as you go through Suzie's test, your pen never touches her paper until the very end. That's because Suzie got all the right answers. She gets an "A." But that's not that surprising, Suzie is a "brain." She's gifted, and if we were gifted, we'd get an "A," too. We get our tests back, it's a "C." We tell ourselves, "Hey, not bad for not studying."

What we don't know is Suzie studies—a lot. She studied for several hours the night before, whereas we glanced at our textbooks, spent time on Facebook, played some phone games, and then finished the evening with Netflix. We meant to study more but kept getting distracted. However, this isn't just a story, this is reality. On studies of American students, if a fellow student consistently does well on tests, the standard assumption is: they must be naturally smart. What's really happening is, these students study more than their counterparts. Steadfast students generally do better than those students with higher IQs. This doesn't mean high IQ makes people sluggish; IQ is just a capacity to process information. For it to be maximized, it still requires someone with drive and discipline.

Intelligence gets enough credit, what's lacking in credit is discipline—the ability to resist distraction. Suzie could have gotten distracted like everyone else, but the difference was in her discipline, not in her "natural" math ability. There's nothing natural about a math ability that's been performance enhanced with study.

In giving credit to inborn intelligence, we avoid having to confront our egos—not to mention our lack of self-control and wasted potential. There is a fine line we must navigate; too much guilt turns to shame, no guilt leads to a lack of accountability. Without a coherent life philosophy, we get pulled into opposite extremes. A thought-out philosophy is how we harmonize contrasting ideas and get the most out of them. And without it, we lose ourselves to cognitive dissonance and self-limiting beliefs.

What Makes You an Outlier

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell spends a chapter discussing Christopher Langan, who reportedly had an IQ between 195 and 210 (higher than Bill Gates and Albert Einstein). In the book, Gladwell drives home the point that intelligence alone doesn't equate to success. Langan, like many intellectuals, intended on becoming an academic. But in the end, he left the university, lost his scholarship, and even lost to a person of "average" intelligence on a TV quiz show. The core message of Outliers is the importance of 10,000 hours of practice, which Gladwell suggests is the minimum requirement for mastery. Philosophers might say, only a master would have the patience to put in over 10,000 hours of practice. One cannot reduce a master to a number of hours. That's like removing effort from practice. And without effort, there is no practice. Mastery is a mindset, not a chart. The combination of mindset and a lifetime of practice is what creates a master. Masters are outliers because it is rare for anyone to stick with anything for an indefinite period of time. It is rarer than diamonds. And if there are innate abilities in addition to discipline, consider that a bonus. However, abilities are like diamonds, we pretend they are rare, but everyone has them.

Stoicism and Other Philosophies

There is a school of Greek philosophy dedicated to the examination of life, it's called Stoicism—a philosophy of endurance. This is why running and wrestling were so revered in the ancient world, they were physical tests of endurance. If you are a Stoic, you determine your life but also accept the consequences. If you lack self-discipline, with much dismay, you take whatever course life takes you. And rather than self-determination, your life will be guided by outside forces and the determinations of others.

The Greeks were not the only people to see the value of self-discipline, there was Seneca in Rome, Zeno in Cyprus, Cleanthes in Turkey, Confucius in China, and Buddha in India (among many others). It is the Do, Tao, or Way aspect of martial arts—that discipline is a physical, mental, and spiritual pursuit. Buddha himself was a grappler and the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma brought martial arts to China, along with Zen. So understand, discipline isn't unique to any one area, it was at one time universally valued. Unfortunately today, it has gone out of favor—it still exists, but as a specialization, and not as a general way of living. (Disciplined in one activity, not disciplined as a person.)

Enjoy life, but be prepared to give up everything you enjoy, that is Stoicism. In Eastern philosophy, this is the doctrine of impermanence. Philosophers didn't invent these concepts, they put into language knowledge gathered through long and painful periods of trial and error. We can never rid ourselves of unhappiness and live in eternal joy, but with reason, we can manage our feelings and search for peace. (This is the search for enlightenment in Eastern philosophy and the Enlightenment in Western civilization.)

It used to be the job of the elder (wise man, sage, guru) to teach the rest of the village how to best manage themselves and live a happy life. If a villager asked, "How does one live a better life?" The guru would respond, "With practice." In modern times, this is the domain of the therapist, yet it is still referred to in the same way, as a "practice."

A Burning Desire Can Burn Through a Delicate Heart

Stoics and Buddhists believe unhappiness comes from insatiable desire. This is a common observation among all surviving belief systems. The modern equivalent of this would be what I like to call: "high expectations, low resilience." If resilience doesn't match expectations, we grow into despair. For happiness, resilience must surpass expectations and not the other way around.

I can't say there is only one path but the common principle among the best philosophies is that of minimalism. If you live up to high expectations, you won't need to live on less. However, if you learned to live on less, you wouldn't wouldn't care about expectations. You would flourish where you stood. Wealth is a greater luxury if you've learned to live without it. The path I was on in my younger years was to actively chase money while increasing my wants. I wanted "x" and if I got "x," I increased "x." I was still in Mr. Johnson's algebra class, still searching for "x"—another rat in the rat race, endlessly envying the Suzies of the world.

I have heard people say, "You can't question my desire," but that goes without saying, it's insatiable. What's in question is your heart, that is the quality that sets one apart. A burning desire will burn through a delicate heart, but courage is what picks you back up when you fall down.