3 ms·

My advice to teenagers remains: you're not going to be one of them This is not usually very hard to check, depending on the sport. Professional athletes at spe

My advice to teenagers remains: you're not going to be one of them This is not usually very hard to check, depending on the sport. Professional athletes at specific positions have fairly specific body types that enable them to succeed. Ask them what sport and position they want to play, and check their body types against the prototypical player at that position. They'll always be able to point to exceptions - someone who had ridiculously high physical coordination or work ethic, but those traits are often more obvious than physical traits.

dionidium 9y ago
They'll always be able to point to exceptions - someone who had ridiculously high physical coordination or work ethic, but those traits are often more obvious than physical traits. Yes, and my sort of utilitarian calculation is that you'll do more good in the world by discouraging a few would-be exceptions while not misleading a billion kids who obviously aren't going to be a professional athlete (or an extreme autodidact, or a Supreme Court Justice, or anything else like a handful of humans can do that the rest of us can't). The truly odd thing about a forum like this one is that some of the people here actually are truly exceptional, one-in-a-million talents. I'm not talking to you :) Anyway, my hypothesis (similar to yours, I think) is that those one-in-a-million talents receive a lot of reinforcement that they're one-in-a-million talents, already. They don't need it from me.