What you’re good at and what you love aren’t always the same thing. Knowing both saves you from a life that’s just impressive.

Talent pulls you toward whatever gets praised, because being good at something is pleasant and people notice. That is not the same as wanting it. You can spend years improving at a thing you feel nothing about, and from the outside it will look like a great run. From the inside it can feel like renting someone else’s life.

Make two short lists: what comes easy to you, and what you would still do on a day nobody was grading. Where they overlap, lean in. Where they do not, decide which one is paying rent and which one is the point.