PERSONAL/SUCCESS SPECIAL....Ability has got Nothing to do with Success

Ability has got Nothing to do with Success 

Sometimes, people are too quick to give up on themselves when work becomes difficult, while others persist and double their efforts to reach their goals. It’s the latter who will eventually succeed, even if they aren’t the “smartest”

Heidi Grant Halvorson knows more about success and successful individuals than most people. The experimental social psychologist, who has authored two books — How we can reach our goals and Nine things successful people do differently, talks about success and busts myths around successful people.
There is a strong tendency to attribute our successes and failures to ability. And by that we usually mean some innate quality or aptitude. So you either win the DNA lottery and end up with lots of intelligence or creativity or willpower and are therefore successful, or you don’t, and you fail. This simplistic explanation is wrong for two reasons. First, ability simply doesn’t work that way. No matter which ability you are talking about — whether it’s intelligence, creativity, athletic prowess or selfcontrol — research shows them to be malleable. In other words, no matter what you start with, what you end up with has everything to do with experience, learning and effort. If you want to be smarter, you can get smarter. When we think of our abilities as fixed and innate, we give up on ourselves when we encounter difficultly, and resign ourselves to failure. The second reason why this explanation is wrong is that no matter how much ability you have, successfully reaching a goal has everything to do the actions you take (or don’t take) along the way. Effort, strategy, mindset, motivation, confidence, planning and monitoring of progress are the true keys to achievement, and they are much more powerful than ‘ability’ or ‘aptitude’. But until we start rejecting explanations like “I’m just not smart enough” or “I don’t have what it takes”, we won’t start looking for the real problems, and figuring out solutions.
Actions, Not Abilities
To explain success (and failure), we need to look to our actions, rather than our abilities. We need to think about the aspects of our performance that are under our control: the effort we put in, the strategies we used, the critical steps we may have neglected, whether or not we considered the obstacles to success, etc.
Smart Equals Successful?
Ability is a very poor predictor of success — measures like IQ don’t do a very good job of telling us who will perform well at work and who will perform poorly. Again, it comes down to doing the right things — abilities are expressed through our actions. Sometimes, people are too quick to give up on themselves when work becomes difficult, while others persist and double their efforts. It’s the latter who will succeed.
Traits of the Successful
Self-confidence, belief in the ability to improve, patience and persistence — these are inherent in a successful individuals. The good news is, none of these traits are innate — we can develop these through experience and effort.  

HG HALVORSON
MOTIVATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST