Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

Something i've been thinking about recently is that i'm pretty good at just about anything i set my mind to (i'm massively lazy and it shows in my results). But, i'm not great (professional or world class level) at anything. And, my hobbies seem to change every couple of years as my interest change. I'm 22 above average intelligence and can't seem to just develop the magical drive or motivation that makes people amazingly successful at that one niche.

Maybe i just haven't found it yet or maybe there's some other reasoning? Too many interests maybe? I'm not sure. But i believe it's prevented me from succeeding in multiple fields. My most recent interest of course being poker which i'm sure i could be very good at if i can over come my laziness which i'm taking steps to do.

Is this a common problem? I mean i just beat an international master on icc (internet chess club) in a couple games of 3 0 (not that impressive as the time constraints allow for a lot of blunders) but i'll never be world class or probably even titled. I don't want the same thing to happen to my poker playing as i genuinely enjoy playing this game. Which is a first as i never had fun at much before.

Does anyone have this same problem or know a way to overcome it? Maybe this is too much like the "intellectual apathy" posts flying all over the place. But something i've had trouble with is finding that one thing that just drives me to commit my life to it.

When did any of you guys (if you have at all) find that one thing that is your life's work? Or just that one thing that you enjoy more than anything else? Is this something that can be learned, taught or come naturally?

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you "aren't" world class at anything?

To me, this sounds like probably 99.9% of the people in the world. It also doesn't seem like something bad or as a failure to life type of thing.

I would be content that you are great at many things.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

I, too, am competent at many things. However, I'm not "world class" at anything...but that's OK. No matter how good you are or how good you think you are, there's always going to be someone better than you.

The sooner you accept that you're never going to be the best at anything, the sooner you will begin to enjoy your activities more. I promise you that.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

its not just a matter of laziness, the fact that there is a point where the work necessary to get better is much more than it was before.

Example:

1st Level: Preflop strategy is easy, grab a pf table and you are better off preflop wise than the majority of the players.

2nd Level: Learn postflop play, when to bet etc. a bit harder but not too difficult to master.

3rd Level: learn advanced postflop play, learning to play marginal hands like mid pair and overcards, much more difficult than the 1st and 2nd level combined. In fact, many players will get to this point and never move past it. Those who do are the great/world class players.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

wtf don't listen to anybody that tells you to be content with mediocrity.

you want to know what your problem is. you already said it, you're lazy. sloth, it's a deadly sin, look it up.

now what does it mean to become unlazy. . .

if you look at what the various spiritual teachings have to say, there is only the present moment, there is no past and future, and all you ever have is this moment right now. that's either a lot to get your head around or very simple to understand. regardless, if you want to 'fix' your laziness, the only place to do it is right now.

so this would mean being aware of how you are lazy and then consciously 'improving' your actions towards quality through slothynessness. see when you're world class you can make up new words. ok now i'm just being gay, gl . . .sloth . . . heh heh.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

this is basically me. I was a division 1 volleyball champion, but wasn't good enough to play on the college team. I've played piano and guitar for 11 years, but havent become engrossed in music, its just a hobby. i surf/skate/snowboard, but i'm not amazing at any of these, just above average. likewise, i'm not amazing at poker but i am certainly a winning player. I've always wished I could be amazing at 1 thing instead of being able to do everything better than most people.

my interests change over the years, i used to be into magic, bowling, etc all sorts of random stuff until i got pretty good, then it lost it's interest.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

Almost no one is great at anything, that is what being great means, that it's something rare and special. There's almost 7 billion people in the world. Almost none of them are Sir Isaac Newton last time I looked. Hell, almost none of them are Phil Helmuth. It's a reality of human existence that if you think you are great, you are probably lying to yourself. You would probably know if you were Tiger Woods or Bill Clinton or even Britney Spears. Fortunately, we are not required to be great to have a good and successful life. Being good at something, anything, is more than most people achieve. Look around you. Most people are not even good at school where they're told what to do A,B,C. Hell, most people can't even bake a good cake. If you are good at something, you're already a step ahead of the crowd if you just apply yourself.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

I think the idea was missed or i didn't illustrate it well. It's not that i'm crying about being good at a lot of stuff, that, i consider a blessing as i'm a pretty competitive person and would drive me crazy to constantly lose. But, i'm meaning in this post what is it that separates those that are great from those who have the potential to be? I believe i have the potential to be regardless of whatever negative person says about how it's possible and that i should just be settled with mediocrity. That's [censored], tell me i'm in denial all day long but someone telling me it's impossible to do or be something just makes me want to accomplish it more.

What i was meaning in the OP is that where does that drive come from that allows a person to be great? Such as Bobby Fischer (world champion and widely considered greatest chess player of all time...although i personally think it was Paul Morphy but that's something entirely different) studied like no other. He woke up day in and day out and lived, breathed and loved chess...even when he was built up too much by the media and scared to sit at the board he was still that much better than everyone else. What creates that? So far the only answer i can come up with is hard work. It's something i've been deathly afraid of my entire life but i'm going to force myself into improvement (at all works of life not just poker) by working hard. I've squandered my life so far and i literally have the potential to do anything (i don't give a [censored] if you think i should settle for mediocrity lol) and intend to start using it.

I just don't fully understand the difference...i guess it really is just self control and motivation...

I dunno...

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

lol@meccaNES....

Its like we have the same "problem"...

(Ok OP, maybe you can explain in the light of relativism what "good" and "great" in your headline means...)

I am also a chess player and i can kill nigel short and other gm`s on a good day on the chess server. But i am not good enough to be a pro.
I play piano, won international prices, but i know i will never be a pianist, because i can`t play (from nature) a certain combination of notes (only piano insiders can understand)...
Ok, so i began to play poker a few months ago. I earn a decent living, but I`ll prolly never be world class like aba etc...

So i understand your "problem"...but its all relative.
Lets look at chess: You know prolly GM loek van Wely from the Netherlands. In his country he`s admired, but he looks like a total idiot, every time he plays against kramnik or topalov etc...He also feels like beeing mediocre. Or what about Bent Larsen and Taimanov? Brilliant players, looking like stupid morons and retards, when playing against Bobby.
So IMO its just the perspective you`re looking at it.


I never had a real chess trainer and maybe i could have would have become a good GM (or still will become *lol*)if i would have studied more. But it would be pretty arrogant to say that i would have easily made it. I just did many other things.
And in order to become word class, you have to concentrate on fewer things. But again, even world class is relative (see van Wely)...

But referring to bobby Fischer: I think its not new, but common sense says, that you can reach like 90% with work and enthusiasm, but there`s the 10% called genius.

Stuey Ungar might have been a complete idiot in many things, but he had a [censored] damn talent to play poker. He just had it. He was a genius. And i think you can`t work to become a genius...
Its like you can learn art, but not becoming an artist.


So maybe you and I and many others will find a thing, where they are "world class" at. Some talents stay undiscovered.


ok, but actually i really don`t care about beeing word class at this or that. I have other values and i don`t do things just to become "the best" at it etc. But thats actually a different topic. But nevertheless its an interesting thread.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

to b very honest, i think this is going to b a very common 'problem' on a site like this. this entire site is flooded with college age kids who spend countless hours practicing, playing, and reading about this game. im sure that lots of the people on this site are winners, altho im sure not for as much as they wud like, but not very many are killing at higherstakes.

in this instance, which is very prevelant on this site, is a case of 'being good, but not great'. so im sure lots of ppl on this site feel this way, so i dont kno if asking this question here is going to give you the greatest unskewed answers.

as to myself, i feel im in the same boat. i do many of things stated above. i do music, poker, pool, and pride myself on academics. however, i feel that i am far from the greatest at any of those, altho i wud say that im fairly talented at all of the above.

ive talked about things like this with my counselor, and we both agree that it comes from my over-evaluative personality. obvi this stems from my childhood, and im sure if u looked carefully at ur own, u cud easily spot the roots of this. really, it all comes down to the fact that you need to just learn to b content with who u are. saddly, i havnt reached that point yet, but im hoping to eventually. im the kid that gets pissed over everything if i dont 'win'.

so this is really perfectly natural, just do some work to understand that you will never be the best, but doin ur best is as good as u can do. gl

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

You're asking people how to be world class at something, which there's serveral problems:

1. Nobody on here that's going to reply is world class at anything significant.
2. If they were, they probably wouldn't even be able to teach you how to.
3. If their advice actually worked, hundreds others would have read the advice thus negating the effectiveness of the advice in being "world class"

Besides those obvious problems, I think most people will be able to see that if you were world class at anything, you would probably know by now. You're probably experiencing the typical teen I-can-do-anything-I-want-better-than-anyone syndrome which is so common, read up on it in psych. (obv it's actually called something else but I forget) Just be logical and realize that you cannot start a post asking others how to be world class, since it's ALMOST paradoxical in nature.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

I can definitely relate to this problem. I'm a very quick learner, and can become good at doing something much quicker than most other people. Eventually, however, I'll reach a certain point where I don't want to put in the time and effort to improve further, and/or I just lose interest in the activity in question.

The biggest obstacle for me becoming an expert in anything, let alone world class, is that the better I become at something, the more work and effort I need to put in to further improve in that particular endeavor, and it snowballs uphill -- it's the basic diminishing returns principal. It definitely requires a leap of faith to put in the time, energy, and effort it takes to reach an expert, and then eventually world class, level of proficiency in a certain activity. There are no guarantees.

I think this is what has held me back in the past. For example, I can completely dedicate myself to learning and developing myself into a world class poker player, but there's no guarantee that I'll ever reach my goal. This is one of my greatest fears -- spending the next decade putting in the time, work, and effort to achieve this goal (or any other goal for that matter), but ultimately failing. Waking up 10 years from now and realizing that it hasn't happened, and probably never will. It's sort of like those people who go to Hollywood and dedicate their lives to try and make it in acting, only to wake up one day when they're 35 and finally realize that it's not going to happen.

Recently, however, I've come to the realization that in order to be great at anything, you have to be willing to lose everything. I could dedicate the next 10 years of my life to trying to become a world class poker player, or world class in some other endeavor, and end up failing to meet my goal, perhaps even miserably. Much of that 10 years of my life may then seem like a waste. It's definitely a gamble. By taking this gamble, however, I am giving myself an opportunity to achieve my goal.

What's the alternative? Playing it safe. Never taking the gamble and making the sacrifices necessary to become truly great at anything. This is the path most people choose. It's quite cowardly. This is also the path which I have been struggling to get off of, and in order to do so, I'll have to take a leap of faith.

And you know what? It's about time I stop monkeying around, procrastinating, and making excuses not to take this gamble.


"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference." -- Robert Frost

"Those people who tell you not to take chances, they are all missing on what life's about. You only live once so take hold of the chance, don't end up like others, same song and dance." -- Metallica

"Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration." -- Thomas Edison

"You already possess everything necessary to become great." -- Crow Indian Proverb

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

In takes a lot of effort to be a world class in any field. I play chess too and I consider myself a decent player. I have a friend who started playing chess seriously about the same time as me. We were going to the same school and we talked a lot about chess those days. He always wanted to take it to the next level but I prefered to focus on my studies and school stuff. He even took a couple of semesters off because he had tough tournaments at the time of final exams but I never did anything like that. Now he is an IM and I am just nothing but a decent above average player. I mean I could easily be much much better if I took his path but I did not want to. All I am saying is that, you can not expect to be a world class player unless you spend a whole lot of time and energy on it and it is way more difficult than it looks like.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

I'm convinced you started this post to brag about beating that guy in chess. I'll stroke your ego. Nice job!!! Way to go!!! Yeah!!!

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

I think a lot of posters seem to be missing the point of OP's question. Clearly he understands that certain folks just have a natural proclivity for certain activities. He also clearly understands that a LOT of work is required to attain the highest levels of mastery. I think what he really wants to know is what drives those few elite folks in any given field to sacrifice (exchange sac? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]) so many other parts of their lives for that one passion.

I think the real questions are: What drives some people to sacrifice and work enough to maximize their abilities in any given field? Why do others never find a field that they are willing to sacrifice for? Or are they incapable of that single-minded passion?

I personally believe that one's self-worth has to be somehow caught up in that endeavor. Just think of how it feels to execute a beautiful mating combination. Now multiply that by a thousand. Also take the pain of losing and multiply it so that your very self worth is contingent upon the outcome of that chess game. Now would you be motivated to be the very best chess player you possibly can be? Read interviews by great men and women in any field. Over and over you will find that whatever they excel at DEFINES WHO THEY ARE.

Why do some people experience this? I certainly cannot answer that. I have no idea. Can you produce this in yourself and, if so, should you? Again, I do not know. I hope this is more on track and that it gives you something to think about.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

To be the best in anything it has to flow through your veins and occupy your thoughts at all time.

Its not really something that can be teached by anyone, perhaps you'll find something that sparks. And than, even if you where just mediocre and spend all your free time and thoughts on it you would still think it was amazing and blessed by being able to do this. Only than can you find the motivation and the drive to actually become world class...

One thing btw, if I where you I wouldn't try to become 'world class' at poker. Its not a very satisfying game, don't get me wrong I think it is amazing and I enjoy every minute I study and learn or play, but at the end of the day if you look back its just a number that slightly increased or dropped. Still for me it feels awesome to know that I completely outplayed some one, that they where lost in the hand and made a mistake as a result, few games can actually give me this rush (not everybody feels this way obviously)...

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

Mastery - George Leonard

A lot of people on here have the same problem as you. I get very good at things quickly then get bored as I stopped progressing, it's no big deal.

I'm competitive and that part of me wants to be up there with the best. But at the end of the day poker is boring and I'm satisfied with making a good living out of it.

I don't really want to devote my life to being the best at it, there is just too many other things in life to discover.

Poker is just a strategic card game and if their was no money in it very few people on these boards would be playing it.

Just work hard and be satisfied with what you achieve.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

which IM did u beat? what's your ICC rating?

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

I find that with almost all mental activities, I can quickly become top 5%. My strongest would be chess (my icc name is same as here actually -- any1 I know post here?). After that, probably poker, if you don´t count any of the bunch of stupid games like sudoku, tetris, random videogames, etc that I also seem to beat pretty much everyone I know at yet suck relative to the top 1%.

I think the reason for this is a combination of aptitute and attitude. It´s not a 99%-1% combination. It shouldn´t be discussed in that way in my opinion. They are both simply essential if you want to be world class, and thus neither one is more important or more relevant than the other.

If you define "world class" as top 1 for every 10 million, then you possess a 1/10,000,000 shot of having the natural talent + possessing the discipline/organisation and ability to work hard enough to maximise your potential.

The things that will decide whether you are good enough to become world class at anything are your genes and your upbringing. You decide neither.

I think that to be world class at anything mental, you need a discipline, a drive, an incredibly fast speed of thought, a complex depth of thought, etc.

This is why you are "above average" at almost everything. Because you possess better mental qualities than the large % the population. However, I think you have a plateau at every activity you may choose to do, and, by the looks of it, your plateau is going to range between top 20% and top 2-3% at whatever you choose to do. To find anything in the future where you can be top 0.000000001%, given the range that you have been at until now is unlikely. In fact, it´s so unlikely that you´d have to lead several million lives to stumble across one where you did find something to be world class at.

p.s. i apologise in advance if this makes no sense, I gotta learn to structure my thoughts better when writing them down!

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

Everything you said explains me to a tee. I am starting to think that the reason we dont get extremely good at any one thing is perhaps a fear of commiting ourselves completely to becoming great at one thing and spending years trying only to find out that this wasnt the thing you were meant to be great at. However, I think that if you truly love poker then you just stick with it. You dont have to devote your whole life to it but just continue to play. Greatness at anything takes practice. Even if you are a natural at poker, true greatness will only come with years of practice and all this practice will be fun as long as you enjoy the game.I love the game and I hope to be world class at it one day but Im not pinning all my hopes and dreams on it. Im just gonna play, play and play some more and see what happens. As long as you stay interested in improving your game your game will continue to improve. Just diversify your interests. It seems that when you devote all your time to something in order to get really good really fast it becomes a bit boring and repetitive. That may be why you never seem to get really really good at these things.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

I have a similar problem. Specifically, I find that it is hard for me to stay motivated to continue improving once I have reached a certain level of competence at an endeavour.

When I start a new activity, it is exciting, there is alot to learn and it is easy to be motivated. As a result, I will tend to obsess on that activity. After a while, I have reached a comfort level or a plateau and new levels of achievement are fewer and farther between. As a result, I start to get bored and frequently drop interest in the activity. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

However, it is nice to achieve at a high level in something that people will pay you for. I have found that fear is a great motivator for this. Every time I find myself struggling to be motivated at my career, I drive by a homeless shelter / trailer park and contrast my lifestyle with others. This provides alot of motivation to "suck it up" and focus on my work.

I also constantly look for new projects and things that can be improved in my job. Fortunately, I have a job where I have this flexibility to see something that needs fixing and am allowed to go ahead and get it fixed (as long as I use my spare time). In other words, I am constantly looking for new challenges which naturally keep my interest. This has the added bonus of causing me to be viewed as valuable by the people who are paying my salary. Its a win-win.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

People are constantly overestimating themselves, much like a few of the responses in this thread. World class is one in a couple million, maybe a couple hundred thousand. A lot of people judge themselves by saying I pick up these things relatively fast compared to those around me, so I must be better than them and if I apply myself, could be world class, but choose not to. There's a lot of things wrong with this statement. If i just picked up a game and beat 10 people who have been playing casually but for a while at it, I would think I have potential. However, look how small 10 is compared to the million necessary to be world class. I used to think I have unique thoughts, but I realized 9/10 times someone else is thinking the same thing, but never voiced it out. So I'm going to further assume that I'm more similar to a lot of you than we realize and assume the aforementioned scenario is somewhat true.

Of course this doesn't always apply, but it's something to think about. When you think you have the potential to be world class at something, think about how many people you're better than, think about how many people are better than you, before deciding if you have the potential. Most likely you don't. There are people born with the ability and drive to work 16 hours a day, sleep 4, and continue working. If you were not born like that, there's a 95% chance you're not going to be world class at anything meaningful. Of course, if you really want to be world class, you could always pick something not so popular, such as sand castle building.

Bottom line is, it's really easy to say motivation and hard work is all you're missing to be world class, but fifty other million people are thinking the same thing. Most of us will have to admit we can never nor ever had the ability to become world class at anything, because by definition, it is extremely hard to achieve and is only meant for those brought up in the right environments and utilizes their full potential.

Edit: Really, just look at a million people. Watch a video tape of the New Year's ball drop at New York. If you can't find a single person in that crowd that can beat you at something, then maybe you're world class. It's a lot of goddamn people.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

hercules,

[ QUOTE ]
I play piano, won international prices, but i know i will never be a pianist, because i can`t play (from nature) a certain combination of notes (only piano insiders can understand)...

[/ QUOTE ]

i am a piano insider, but don't know what you mean. please explain. just curious.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

i have a different perspective to all of this. i seem to be good a lot of things, but great at nothing, as well. my frustration, however, rather than believing laziness is keeping me from immortality is the more realistic notion that even if i dedicated myself to something i would still not achieve a level of mastery that would be significant. that is what is truly troubling.

"i should apply myself, really concentrate and own this endeavour."

"what's the point? for all that trying you'll still be a waste of space."

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

[ QUOTE ]
i have a different perspective to all of this. i seem to be good a lot of things, but great at nothing, as well. my frustration, however, rather than believing laziness is keeping me from immortality is the more realistic notion that even if i dedicated myself to something i would still not achieve a level of mastery that would be significant. that is what is truly troubling.

"i should apply myself, really concentrate and own this endeavour."

"what's the point? for all that trying you'll still be a waste of space."

[/ QUOTE ]

If you have that negative attitude, then you will never be great at anything.

The bigger issue, imo, is that even if you have a positive attitude, and dedicate 10+ years of your life to achieve greatness in some endeavor, there's absolutely no guarantee that you'll become great or world class. The odds are definitely stacked against you. It's a huge gamble to undertake such a quest.

Take golf, for example. How many people are there in the world right now working their butts off trying to become regulars on the pga or european tour? And over 99.9% of them are never going to make it. There's a multitude of people on this planet who have dedicated the last 20+ years of their lives to try and become world class golfers and it hasn't happened, and never will. Think about how depressing it has to be for those people once they realize that they have failed and will never meet their goal. What if they had spent all that time and energy elsewhere by starting their own business, or a career in another field?

But the optimist will say at least they tried. At least they actually chased their dream, while most men are far too cowardly to take the risk.

The pessimist will say I told you so.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

After reading this thread, it looks like we've got a plethora of world class poker and chess players posting here.

If you want to be world class at something you need a combination of a)Addictive personality, and b)some kind of mental psychosis. All the greats are addictive and range from mildly to extremely psychotic. If you're taking meds, I suggest you stop taking them and give it shot. Good luck.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

[ QUOTE ]
After reading this thread, it looks like we've got a plethora of world class poker and chess players posting here.

If you want to be world class at something you need a combination of a)Addictive personality, and b)some kind of mental psychosis. All the greats are addictive and range from mildly to extremely psychotic. If you're taking meds, I suggest you stop taking them and give it shot. Good luck.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wtf? So you're saying Magic Johnson, David Sklansky, Warren Buffet, Tiger Woods, Al Michaels, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Koybayashi, Bruce Lee, and Ronnie Coleman are all psychotics with addictive personality disorders?

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
After reading this thread, it looks like we've got a plethora of world class poker and chess players posting here.

If you want to be world class at something you need a combination of a)Addictive personality, and b)some kind of mental psychosis. All the greats are addictive and range from mildly to extremely psychotic. If you're taking meds, I suggest you stop taking them and give it shot. Good luck.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wtf? So you're saying Magic Johnson, David Sklansky, Warren Buffet, Tiger Woods, Al Michaels, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Koybayashi, Bruce Lee, and Ronnie Coleman are all psychotics with addictive personality disorders?

[/ QUOTE ]

lmmfao--are you implying that wittgenstein was NOT psychotic???lmao... i concur (primarily bc i'm a genius addict...lmao) that top of the order requires some unique qualities that usually = borderline personality disorder in the eyes of society...but wtf do i know, i'm a thomas szaz fan?!lmao...

mark my words---i will be at table one at the bellagio defending the corporation's bankroll!!! gimme 3 years max m'f'ers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

peace out yo!

sean

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

I've pondered this quite a bit lately. I'm not doing so well as a stock trader. Looks like I'll be playing a lot more poker in the next few months. Maybe, just maybe I might make that leap of faith going pro. But previously, when I did do it for a brief time, I was terribly distraught with the swings (not the case when it was a hobby for 4 years). At that time, I thought, I better get a job, even though this pays a whole lot more - who knows when poker fad might end.

I've also come to the realization that I've probably never fully committed myself to my endeavours. I've been good at 3 things in my life: soccer, singing, poker.

I think most people that are intelligent and logical, generally take the safe option, following paths of least resistance.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

I feel you man. I was an above average football player, very good wrestler, decent at music etc etc but not like revered for any one thing per say. I struggled with this exact problem earlier, but I realized that I had the most fun and prolly most potential in the business or poker world, and both were very fun to me. It is normal for a 22 year old to switch interests here and there, but as I always say "stick to your guns", if you are good and have a passion, you can be great. I did it with business and poker and at 19 I am doing well in both.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

Mecca,

if you really think you have the potential for greatness, get off your ass and do something. you sound like you are scared to fail. the upside to this is that you will start trying lots of new things, and may find that thing that does spark you.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

It's naive, to, in these days believe that we can enter the path to greatness in the later stage of our life’s.
If you are to succeed you must have that extraordinary gift of some kind and must as well be sure in your on mind that you are and if not are will be the best.
You will never be great because you lack passion and dedication.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

Advice: Eat well and get a bunch of sunlight. Seriously, it will make a world of differerence (medically proven). Then workout for 3 weeks making very small improvements everyday (no weights, just stretching, running, pushups, pullups, situps). Socialize with new people for 3 weekends. Every night before you sleep, WRITE DOWN what you'd like to accomplish in life and why. I bet $100 if you do this you will have improved willpower and focus, enabling yourself to overcome that fear of failure.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

There always is someone else better than you, this is true. I think this feeling of being "OK" at everything is very inaccurate. I think it only seems this way because we push ourselves to compete with tougher and tougher opponents. We keep doing this until we've reached a point where we cant beat our opponents anymore which will inevitably happen to us all(with the exception of a very small few like tiger woods or roger federer. It is this dead end we hit that makes us think we're just, "OK".

"World class" is a relative term i think. For example i would consider a pitcher on a minor league baseball team world class, but i bet that pitcher considers himself "ok" since there are better pitchers than he and he's not in the majors.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

[ QUOTE ]
It's naive, to, in these days believe that we can enter the path to greatness in the later stage of our life’s.
If you are to succeed you must have that extraordinary gift of some kind and must as well be sure in your on mind that you are and if not are will be the best.
You will never be great because you lack passion and dedication.

[/ QUOTE ]

you're naive.

He's not talking about becoming the best in the world. He is talking about achieving a goal. Fullfilling something, not give up half way as usual, find your 'thing'. Etc etc.

Re: Good at many things/Great at nothing... Is this a common problem?
 

[ QUOTE ]
But, i'm meaning in this post what is it that separates those that are great from those who have the potential to be?

[/ QUOTE ]
Passion for what you do