| I confess.
I've been watching television. Not only that, I've been watching
the reality show 'The X-Factor'. If you're not familiar with it
this is what happens. The show advertises for people to come to
an audition to perform in front of a panel of experts for 30 seconds
to see if they have 'The X-Factor'. Amazingly tens of thousands
actually turn up. The entertainment value comes from witnessing
talentless hopefulls fail miserably and being cruely destroyed by
the ruthless critique of the panel of music industry 'experts'.
Now, we are never told what this mysterious 'X-Factor' actually
is. Many people go into it and perform excellently to what they
perceive it to be (such as an excellent Barber Shop Quintet) but
fail because they are not a sexy girl/boy band. What's interesting
about it is that so many of them are so determined, convinced that
their destiny is to be a pop star, convinced that they can't do
anything else and convinced that if they fail they'll be totally
destroyed for ever. The most common thing we hear them say is that
'this is my last chance'. Then of course they get told they have
the musical ability of a fog horn and get kicked out of the competition.
This all gives us a great deal of information about how to not only
win the X-Factor competition but also what we need to achieve any
goal.
Wanting it so badly isn't enough.
Being very good at what you do isn't enough. Putting on a good performance
isn't enough.
You need determination, it's essential, and you need self confidence.
But what you don't need is a distorted rose-tinted view of your
own abilities. You need to know exactly how good (or bad) you are
so you can practice and get better. You need the faith but you need
to work hard. You need to be consistently good and be congruent
(ie. walk your talk). But the most important thing of all is that
you must be in it to win it. You must be in the competition - and
be in the right competition for what you do.
The other thing we can learn from all this is that the contestants
only get 30 seconds in front of the judges. Often in our lives we
only have a short window of opportunity to show 'the judges' what
we've got. It's no good begging, it's no good saying 'I'm usually
much better' and it's no good saying that you can sing a dozen other
songs better. And as in the programme you don't get to see the other
competitors. You don't know how good you need to be to win - you
can only be your very best.
The reason they call it the X-Factor is that what they're looking
for is not exactly obvious or easy to describe. It's that special
something. Not all of us can (or want) to be pop stars but we all
know that we each have some indescribable something special to offer.
So what is it for you? What's your X-Factor and are you putting
it to use? What have you got the burning desire to do? When opportunity
knocks, are you ready? What performance will you step up to give?
What is it that you're best at? Which competition can you surely
be the winner?
Your X-Factor is your heart's desire. It could be what you were
placed on the Earth to do. Get to it. |
