The pursuit of excellence in programming

This i such a great article, I don't know where to begin.

  If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, 
  it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all. — Michelangelo

I've always thought being a hard worker is the biggest talent of all. When I played icehockey there where a few guys who where extremely good; he scored maybe 10 goals every game and I remember how proud I was when I stole the puck from him once.

But he wasn't hardworking and from being considered a genius when he was a kid he became talented when he got older and now he's just average (this is also touched on within the article). This seems to transfer to whatever field you look, from programming to icehockey and painting.

Although the title has programming in it the article is more about self-improvement and learning than of anything else.

  Kids who are labeled and praised because of their “innate capabilities”, 
  will often suffer from an overconfidence that will affect their ability to 
  challenge themselves through the depths of the unknown, 
  because they feel it would threaten their status. What if they fail? 
  It would mean, in their eyes, that perhaps they are not the smart person 
  they have been assumed to be all along. 
  We all have seen such kids failing here and there, 
  and quickly making excuses such as, “Oh, I wasn’t trying at all”.

This hurts so much because I've been exactly like this for a long time and I'm finally trying to break out of it. I was good at math but I didn't dare to challenge myself so I was content with being considered "talented".

It might also explain why I did so hilariously bad at french: Why try? I don't dare to fail...