A popular motivational speaker offers a new way of measuring intelligence that will enable people to apply their talents and gifts to everyday life and perform at a higher level as a result. 75,000 first printing. Tour. Tom Scott Co-President, Nantucket Nectars We all have the ability to succeed -- we're born with it. Too often, that ability is hidden behind fear and misplaced reliance on traditional theories and paths. Doctor Bob teaches us how to re-find that ability and how to use it. I apply it to work, to sports -- to all aspects of life. -- Review Bob Rotella was the Director of Sports Psychology for twenty years at the University of Virginia, where his reputation grew as the person champions talked to about the mental aspects of their game. His client list includes Hall of Fame golfers like Pat Bradley, Tom Kite, and Nick Price as well as stars of the present, such as Darren Clarke, Keegan Bradley, Padraig Harrington, Graeme McDowell, Mark Wilson, and Rory Mcllroy. A writer for and consultant to Golf Digest , he lives in Virginia with his wife, Darlene. Chapter One: Brilliance of a Different Sort Most of us think we know what talent is. We hear a soprano hit and hold a clear, high C and we think she's talented. We see a basketball player soar above the defense, turn in the air, and jam the ball through the hoop for two points. We think he's talented. We see a skinny kid in the front row of a math class who effortlessly glides through calculus and scores an 800 on the SAT test. We think he's talented. Talent, we think, is something granted or withheld by fate. It's in our genes or it's not in our genes. It's speed and leaping ability. It's a lyrical voice. It's a facile mastery of calculus. And we think that talent, defined in this way, by and large determines an individual's ability to succeed. Television and the press reinforce this notion. They glorify the precocious, natural achievers and make it seem as if they live on a mountaintop high above the valley in which the rest of the world plods along. I don't dispute that the soprano, the math whiz, and the slam-dunk artist have talent as talent is conventionally defined. But in twenty-five years as a psychologist, working with people who want to succeed in fields ranging from golf to finance, I've learned that this conventional talent, while important and helpful, is not sufficient to make an individual successful. In many cases, it's not even necessary. I've learned that other abilities and qualities, traits of character less easily observed than physical gifts or test scores, do lead to success. These traits are brilliance of a different sort. They comprise what I call real talent. This book is about real talent. It's a book of good news, because unlike the talent to hit high C or execute the tomahawk slam, real talent doesn't depend on your genes. Real talent is something anyone can develop. Take the case of a friend of mine, Bob Sherman. Bob grew up in the 1950s in Durand, Michigan, a small town near Lansing and Flint. He was the quintessential small-town sports star. He quarterbacked the football team. He ran the hurdles on the track team. He excelled in baseball. In fact, he attracted a bonus offer from the Boston Red Sox organization. In an athletic sense, he seemed well endowed with conventional talent. But his parents had not been to able to go to college, and they were determined that Bob would. "They saw a college degree as a way of getting out of the blue-collar world, of getting a high-class job," Bob recalls. So he turned down the Red Sox, temporarily, and chose to go to the University of Iowa on a football scholarship. Iowa, unlike some of the other schools that recruited him, did not insist that he forgo baseball in favor of spring football practice. But Iowa was, in those days, a football powerhouse, and an interesting thing happened to Bob when he got there. He found out that he was no longer considered supremely talented in the conventional sense of the word. He was still as fast and as agile as he had been at home in Durand. But there were faster, more agile athletes at Iowa. And a lot of them were bigger than Bob was. In the context of big-time college athletics, Bob recalls, "I wasn't very gifted. I didn't have great ability." He had to adjust. He didn't lose faith in his physical gifts. He still believed in them. But he understood that they were no longer sufficient. If he was going to succeed at Iowa, he had to discover his real talent. And he did. He started with some of the qualities of character his parents had instilled in him. They had always told him the important thing was doing his best. They had helped him to learn that there is no shame in failure if you fail after giving everything you have. "I decided," Bob remembers, "that I might get beat out, but no one would outwork me." So he threw himself into football competition. His coaches suggested that if he wanted to play, he would have