Every person you admire made a long list of choices you never got to see.

What reaches you is the result, with the decisions edited out. Behind anybody you look up to is a stack of unglamorous choices: the thing they turned down, the year spent on something boring, the help they asked for. You see the outcome and assume a natural ease, because the list is invisible and nobody narrates it.

When you admire someone, get curious about the choices rather than the talent. Ask them what they said no to, which almost nobody is asked and most people enjoy answering. Then notice that your own list is being written now, in the same unremarkable way.