Larry Bird, Winners, Talents and Skills

Winners, Talents, and Skills

I was looking for a quote about talents and skills. I found the following quote from Hall of Fame Basketball player Larry Bird:

A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals

Larry Bird

I am only a few months older than Larry Bird. We were in college at the same time. I was at basketball dud Northwestern University while he took little known Indiana State to the National Championship game his junior year.

Anyone who saw Larry standing on the sideline would say he was just an average player. In college, he was tall and some would say did not look like an athlete.

Talents

He had some real natural talents. My guess they were great vision and hands. He could see the court and teammates out of the corner of his eye. He could make the basketball twirl and spin in his subtle hands.

Skills

Larry Bird developed into a tremendous shooter and passer. Did this come naturally? No, he worked hard at it. His talents made it seem easy. He could see things on the court that allowed him to leverage the natural skills in his hands to make great passes.

Would you call Larry Bird a winner? HECK YES!

What are your talents?

I want you to go back to childhood. What did you just love to do?

I was talking with my friend who gave me the idea for this whole series and asked her what she loved to do.

She loved to ride horses. It was the challenge of working with the horse. A horse that was big and powerful. She thoroughly enjoyed it.

Childhood was a time of innocence. We did not have work, society, and other factors telling us what we wanted or loved to do.

What were your talents in your youth?

Did you build skills to complement your talents?

If you had identified your natural talents did your build skills that complement them. For myself, the answer was no. I quickly got on the path of doing what my parents told me to do.

There is enough time in your life to develop new skills. Target them to complement your unique and individualistic talents.

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Are you ready to discover your talents?

I just celebrated my second anniversary of saying goodbye to corporate America. As I prepare to do my 2012 income taxes, this will be the first time in over 40 years where I did not receive a single paycheck in a calendar year.

I am discovering my talents and focusing on developing new skills that complement my talents.

How about you? Are you ready to focus on your talents and skills to become a WINNER?

Marc Miller

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Comments

Rachel says
January 6, 2015 at 5:34 am

“I just celebrated my second anniversary of saying goodbye to corporate America. As I prepare to do my 2012 income taxes, this will be the first time in over 40 years where I did not receive a single paycheck in a calendar year.”

I just wanted to say that I find this really impressive and I want to congratulate you for it! (I know this is an old post, but still)

- Marc Miller says
  January 6, 2015 at 6:46 am
  
  I have not received a paycheck in several years now. 8^))