I had a conversation recently with a woman about her two grandsons, both of whom obsessed with sports. “They come by it honestly,” she said, referencing their lineage of high-performing athletes. “It’s in their blood.”
Then she said something that struck me: “They’ve got a fire in their belly. And that’s not something you can teach.”
She’s right, of course. You can teach someone to throw a ball, to work fundamentals, to play an instrument, to sing, to write, to paint. But there’s an added ingredient that separates the hobbyist from the professional.
It’s that intangible fire in the gut, the seed planted in the belly by something beyond our knowing. It’s the fuel, that driving force that that in those moments of doubt and despair, whispers, “Keep going…”
If you have it, you have it.
If you don’t, you don’t.