this was encouraging.

"'I think the most general claim here,' Ericsson says of his work, 'is that a lot of people believe there are some sort of inherent limits they were born with. But there is surprisingly little hard evidence that anyone could attain any kind of exceptional performance without spending a lot of time perfecting it.'" 

In other words, practice makes perfect, and goal-setting and immediate feedback are key to becoming "natural" at something: long-boarding, Scrabble, dancing, whatever. 

This is a little article that two of my favorite authors, the guys that wrote Freakonomics, put together for the New York Times Magazine. They spoke with Anders Ericsson, one of the world's leading researchers on expertise, and discussed how "stars" are born. For those of us who feel like we just didn't have the capabilities to be this or that thing we always wanted to be, this article is an obvious encouragement.