REFINING YOUR DIAMOND THROUGH HARD WORK
Your talents and gifts are like diamond. If you don’t refine them through hard work, they can never appreciate in value. The first thing you need to do to succeed in life is to discover your talents and gifting. The second thing you should have in place to be able to rank among the great names in history is to make sure that you don’t leave your talents and gifts in a raw state. Your talent is just like diamond. Let’s assume your talent is in the area of music. Don’t just be satisfied with the fact that you can play the keyboard or sing and then just leave your talent at that state. You are not the only one who is talented with the gift of singing.
The idea of this article and the book is to challenge you to being the best in whatever you do. My sincere desire is that you rise from the complacency of just having a talent to becoming the best in the world in the area of your gifting and talents. That is however only possible through hard work. For you to become the best in the world you must become a workaholic and make yourself competitive. Even if someone is more talented than you, with hard work you can become better than that person if he or she refuses to work hard.
There may be people who have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do – and I believe that. –Derek Jeter
You have no control over what talent you are born with or who is born with more talent than you but you have total control over how diligent you could become. Diligence is what makes the difference. You will never be able to become competitive if you leave your talents and gifts in the raw state. You won’t be able to compete at a world level and become the best if you don’t work hard to cultivate your talents. You will never be able to add value to the world. So after you discover your talent, the next thing you should do is to refine it. In Africa for example, some village people go about looking for diamond and after finding the raw diamond, they sell it out at a very cheap price. Why do they sell it at a very cheap price?
The reason is because raw diamond is not expensive. The diamond that is very expensive is the refined diamond. Why are they very expensive? It is because they are polished, cleaned and well refined through the process of work. Any gift and calling that is refined will automatically increase in value and in worth.
Therefore, you have to put a system in place for polishing your gift. That system that is needed to polish your gift better than anyone else is called hard work. The difference between talented people is hard work. Anybody who works hardest to develop his talents becomes king over the others. Do not make the mistake of thinking that you can become great just because you are endowed with talent, no sir!
There are a bunch of talented people roaming the streets and struggling to survive in a world where workaholics become kings. You will remain a servant if you don’t become diligent in developing your talent. You have to improve and refine your gifts. Just being good in music is not a guarantee that you will be competitive and it is also not a guarantee that you can earn a living from it. Most people write to me asking about how they can make money from their gifts. The answer I give to them is that, even if you know your gifts and calling, until you polish and refine it you can never make money from it. Until you invest in your gift and add value to it, it will never become valuable.
If you don’t improve, refine and polish your gift, it will never be able to reward you. That is why you see so many talented and gifted people who cannot make ends meet. An indolent man who is highly talented will always depend on and beg from a workaholic who is not as talented for survival. Your gift will only be able to feed you if you refine and add value to it. How do you refine your gift, for example if you are called into music? You must invest time and energy rehearsing again and again. You must attend music classes to perfect your skills either in vocals or in instrumentals.
You will have to work hard by dedicating ten thousand hours of rehearsals and practice into refining that gift if you want to be one of the best musicians in the world. This is called the rule of 10,000 hours which was proposed by Malcolm Gladwell.
This rule states that 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice” are needed to become world-class in any field. Therefore, you must invest ten thousand hours into perfecting your skills. You will have to work harder by investing more time into the development of your talents than every other person. That was why Michael Jordan stood out and became exceptional in his career. He worked harder than everyone else in refining and perfecting his gifts and talents. Don’t forget. Talent is not enough! Talent must be polished and refined. Value must be added to your talent. You must improve your skills but that is going to be possible only through hard work.
Now the question in your mind may be “why must I work hard to improve and refine my gift? Can’t I still fulfill my purpose without refining it?” Well! You can still fulfill your purpose without refining your gifts but you will only be able to do that at a lower level. You will only end up as a local champion if you don’t work hard to refine your gifts. You can’t feed from your gift if you don’t invest hard work into it. You will be as cheap as the raw diamond if you don’t refine your gifts. For your talent to be able to sustain you, you must work hard to improve on it. Only refined diamond costs a fortune.
Excerpts from the Book “Why You Urgently Need To Become A Workaholic”. #DSABOOKS
This book can be found on dsabooksplanet.com and Amazon.com
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, CHURCH AND NATION
By Pastor Sunday Adelaja.
