Maria Vasquez

PC 101L Life Skills

Sister Issa

10 December 2022

Hard Work over Talent to Achieve Success

Have you ever wanted to learn something new, but were afraid you wouldn’t be good

at it? Or maybe, you thought you couldn’t achieve your goals because you didn’t have the

talent to do it? When I was a child, I asked myself if I could sing someday because I wasn’t

born with talent. I wasn’t born with the talent to sing well, but I really wanted to be good at it.

I even asked myself many times if I could make it someday. It took many months even years

of practicing and singing lessons. Finally, I could sing well. Even though the path to success

is full of obstacles we have and doubts about whether or not we can achieve our goals

because our path is full of obstacles, success it can be reached. Some testimonies from

experts, a prosperous person and my own experience have shown that in order to learn new

things, achieve any goal, and be successful, it takes hard work more than just a person’s

talent is needed.

Firstly, expert testimonies can provide clear teaching that the main action we should

take to achieve something in our lives is hard work. President Spencer W. Kimball says “If

you succeed, it isn’t because of luck. Success comes from faith and work and prayer.” It is

true, because success can’t come without any effort or action. Also, working hard not only

can help us get success in temporal things like job or something like that. We can prosper in

our struggles too. In The Forbes Scrapbook of Thoughts on the Business of Life, New York,

1968 (p. 427) Korsaren suggested “If you are poor, work. … If you are happy, work. Idleness

gives room for doubts and fears. If disappointments come, keep right on working. If sorrow
overwhelms you, … work. … When faith falters and reason fails, just work. When dreams

are shattered and hope seems dead, work. Work as if your life were in peril. It really is. No

matter what ails you, work. Work faithfully. … Work is the greatest remedy available for

both mental and physical afflictions.” Whatever our goal is, hard work can keep us on track

to achieve what we crave.

In addition, an experience of a person who prospered in his objectives shows that her

hard work for many years including failures, helped her to be successful, even though her

failures. Gladys Tejeda is an amazing athlete in Peru. Every day, she got up at 4:30am to go

running. While her father rode a horse, she chose to run. She had to endure challenges due to

poverty, including running barefoot. One day, she participated in a marathon in her city, but

despite her effort she lost. Subsequently, she faced the death of her father. For this reason, she

wanted to give up and stop running. Over time, she understood and overwhelmed

discouragement. Later and after a lot of work, she participated in many Olympics, winning

various medals. Among them, the gold medal she won the 2019 Pan-American Games, where

she also broke a record. She said “I’m satisfied with this result. It is the result of effort, while

we find ourselves training far from home, the hours of practice and much more. All this has

helps us to achieve this goal…”

Finally, my own experience can give us a real example that working hard can lead to

get whatever even without a talent. While I was studying English in a Language Center, there

was the possibility to get a scholarship. This would help me to continue my studies, since I

didn’t have enough money to pay for my tuition. To get it, I had to have the best score of all

the students in my level. Obviously, I wasn’t the only one who wanted to get thatis great

opportunity. There were many students with talent to easily learn English easily. It was too

difficult. I wanted to give up in my way, but also, I wanted to continue learning this important

language. Every day, I had to go over and over again the topics that I was learning. In class, I
had to pay attention more than other students. I spent many hours studying for my exams

while I saw other relaxing, taking it easily and getting good scores. The months passed, until

one day when I got a class, my classmate told me that the academic coordinator had looking

for me to tell me that I had managed to win the scholarship. I felt so happy and finally my

hard work had been rewarded. I had reached my goal despite not having the talent.

Many people think that to achieve any goal or learn something new you have is

necessary to have talent. Talent is the special capacity to learn and run any task. Also, there

are some articles that talk about the fact that talent is the main aggregate that makes the

difference in the searching of success in the world. Likewise, some real experiences and

studies have shown that the most important element to develop our strengths is our talent.

Although, this concept is immersed in people who experienced and studied about it, it can’t

detract the greatest power of a hard work to be success which is demonstrated by testimonies

from experts and some experiences including mine. As Bishop J. Richard Clarke commented

in his talk “The Principle of Work” in May 1993, referring to a successful writer “His success

is not accidental. It does not come solely from the endowment of a natural talent. His success

comes from developing the habit of hard work”. All of successes in achieving our goals are

the result of a constant effort and work.

Definitely, every person needs to work hard to reach goals or learn new things, no

matter if someone is talented or not. As we have seen above, testimonies of experts can

demonstrate that nothing is achieved by talent alone. An experience of a successful person

and my personal experience show that a constant hard work although our setbacks or fears,

lead to reaping great fruits of success.