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Latest Read: The Talent Code

The Talent Code Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How by Daniel Coyle. Daniel is the author of The Culture Code, a New York Times bestseller. He is also a contributing editor for Outside Magazine.

The Talent Code Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How by Daniel Coyle

Is there a secret formula to gaining talent? Daniel is sharing with readers and probably more specifically parents, coaches, and companies insights to maximize talent.

In fact, the lessons include future MLB players developed in the Caribbean, and even a music academy in upstate New York. Daniel’s story outlines how these key elements can work within your brain. However there is an element that you must have a gift and certainly the grit to achieve new levels of performance.

Myelin, is a microscopic neural substance that adds vast amounts of speed and accuracy to your movement and thought. However, this is no miracle cure, take a pill solution. In fact, scientists have are beginning to view myelin as type of ‘holy grail’ and foundation for various types of success.

Daniel also identifies the three key elements that will allow you to develop your gifts and optimize your performance. Daniel relays some the new research on neurology. Added to this is data from geographic locations to more accurately identify three elements that are driving success:

• Deep Practice–Everyone knows that practice is a key to success. What everyone doesn’t know is that specific kinds of practice can increase skill up to ten times faster than conventional practice.

• Ignition–We all need a little motivation to get started. But what separates truly high achievers from the rest of the pack? A higher level of commitment—call it passion—born out of our deepest unconscious desires and triggered by certain primal cues. Understanding how these signals work can help you ignite passion and catalyze skill development.

• Master Coaching–What are the secrets of the world’s most effective teachers, trainers, and coaches? Discover four virtues that enable “talent whisperers” to fuel passion, inspire deep practice, and bring out their best.

A friend’s daughter is certainly finding a lot of success playing junior golf. Can those three key elements help drive her performance, or increase her success in the coming years? In chapter two: Ignition is the discovery of how Korean golfers dominate the LPGA (written in 2009):

For South Korea’s golfers, it was the afternoon of May 18, 1998, when a twenty-year-old named Se Ri Pak won the McDonald’s LPGA Championship and became a national icon. (As one Seoul newspaper put it, “Se Ri Pak is not the female Tiger Woods; Tiger Woods is the male Se Ri Pak.”) Before her, no South Korean had succeeded in golf. Flash-forward to ten years later, and Pak’s countrywomen had essentially colonized the LPGA Tour, with forty-five players who collectively won about one-third of the events.
pg. 180

There may indeed be real potential

In conclusion, the introduction to myelin and stories of success make an interesting read. Daniel will make you reconsider how your view ‘talent’ and how to cultivate your passions to reach an even greater potential. However, leveraging Michael Jordan and Anna Kournikova falls outside the normal range of readers. Both certainly were gifted with talent and desire.


TEDxSitka | Growing A Talent Hotbed
RSA | The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
UWSP | Daniel Coyle: The Talent Code in Stevens Point, WI