There's a J In there… Somewhere!

Over on Threads, I saw a status talking about how labelling a child ‘gifted’ will mean the child won’t put in the ‘hard work’. While this may be true on some level, there is something else happening here.

I was one of those kids who found things easy.

I would be taught a concept and understood it, especially if it was something I found interesting. I would then go down a rabbit hole to learn what I could. Back in the 1990s, it wasn’t as easy as it is now.

I would do my best on assignments that didn’t make sense.

The undiagnosed ADHD part of my brain left things to the last minute and, for the most part, I got good marks.

Fitting myself into the box was ‘hard work’.

I was constantly told to ‘work hard’ to get ‘ahead’ or to ‘be successful’.

So I continued to work hard.

I learned skills that didn’t come naturally in order to be paid to do a job. With some of these skills, I mastered them and now I’m good at this particular thing, even if it doesn’t suit my brain.

I work hard.

The flip side to this is something no one expected, not even me.

Because I was told to ‘work hard’ and that this hard work would be valued (it’s not always, but that’s a whole other post), I dismissed or undervalued the things that come easy to me.

Writing a story is easy for me.

Running my writers’ groups is easy for me.

Inspiring kids and others to create is easy for me.

Coming up with creative ideas to do things is easy for me.

Talking about the weird and wonderful things in my head is easy for me.

However, none of these are things that I felt was of any value… simply because it wasn’t ‘hard work’.

Even in my business, I keep overthinking anything that I find easy, thinking that is something that can’t possibly work and bring me success because it’s not ‘hard work’.

I think we need to downplay the ‘hard work’ narrative and let people know that it’s okay to lean in to what is easy. That it’s okay to follow your passions and go a path that brings you joy. And that it’s okay to outsource some of that hard work to someone who finds it easier!