One of the tragedies of this world is the prevalence of self-limiting beliefs. It is common among people of all ages. A self-limiting belief goes something like this:
“I’m just not talented enough to do/learn ___.”
Now, it is true that sometimes you just aren’t talented enough, like in the case of certain athletic feats. For example, most of you, no matter how hard you try, will probably not break Usain Bolt’s 100-m dash world record, simply because of the body that you were born with.
But when it comes to other goals, the only thing limiting you is your belief.
I just got back from a trip to Juan Aldama, a small town in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico. One of the fascinating things I’ve come to realize (other than my newfound appreciation for reliable tap water that I have back home) is just how incredible the human brain is. I consider myself a pretty intelligent person, yet the Spanish I’m able to speak was nothing compared to the little kids playing about in the streets of Mexico, and they haven’t even had a single class on Spanish!
“Of course they can speak Spanish, they’re growing up in Mexico” you may say. But speaking a language is an incredibly difficult feat. Any language spoken in the world today has a great variety of sentence structures and subtleties to say the same things in a slightly different tone, yet humans are incredible at picking up these subtleties by performing pattern recognition, almost all unconsciously. In the case of a language like Spanish, it is made even more difficult by the presence of verb conjugation. In order to use the language effectively, you must know every conjugation of every verb, and boy are there lots of them! The verb form changes depending on so many factors (1st, 2nd, or 3rd person? singular or plural? present, past, or future?). Put all those together and you quickly realize that it is nothing short of a miracle that kids are speaking any language. Speaking a language is a much more complex task than solving calculus problems, playing jazz piano, or programming a machine-learning algorithm. Yeah those things are kind of complex too, but nowhere near the complexity of the vast knowledge and problem-solving skill you must possess to speak a language. Yet these kids handle it no problem. They’re still little kids!!
So don’t you dare say that you are not talented enough. Your brain, with enough practice, has mastered the art of speaking your mother language. What makes you think that it cannot master other things?
