Hacker News Reader

Comment by travisjeffery | Hacker News Reader

Gretzky wasn't born with that amount of talent, his talent grew out of doing nothing but spending as much time as he did practicing on the rink his father made him, day in and day out. Practice, practice, practice.

Get the idea out of your head that people are on the outset better than you. You're always going to lose with this kind of attitude you have, though. Even if you won I don't even think you'd know it.

View on HN

That's nice, but you're ignoring the rest of my post.

What if Gretzky never got better? What if no matter how much pushing and training and practice he never scored a goal? I'm sure there are many people out there like that. I happen to be one of them.

"What if Gretzky never got better? What if no matter how much pushing and training and practice he never scored a goal? I'm sure there are many people out there like that. I happen to be one of them."

Then he's doing something wrong. If you spend hours upon hours doing something, you will get better at it.

What if someone was born with no legs? Or even a minor change in a single gene somewhere else that affects their stamina or whatever? Are they going to get to Gretzky's level? Never. Not without a radical alteration to their biology.

Kyle Maynard, a man born with no legs and only stumps for arms, became a champion wrestler. He wrote an interesting autobiography aptly called "No Excuses".

When it comes to a real world fight, he lost his first MMA fight.

If he had legs and arms he probably would have won and gone much further.

Even if you think you might not end up doing something totally profound, why live life as such a pessimist? That's certainly no fun at all.

The trick is balancing this against knowing when to change direction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com