Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads. — Erica Jong
Every talent has a cost.
It's a cost measured in work, learning, sweat, dedication, struggles, failures, disappointment and, sometimes, pain. It is all that it takes to realise the potential of that talent so it can create an impact for you and for others. Because talent in itself is just the potential of something.
As Angela Duckworth writes in her book Grit, "Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential."
That effort is necessary to transform your talent into a gift for you and others. Unless you accept the costs and are willing to follow your talent to the dark places it leads, you won't discover and manifest its full potential.
The amount of effort needed is subjective. So, I can't tell you how much you'll have to grind to reap the fruits of your talent.
But here are two things I've learned.
Every journey is unique. It's easy to feel like you got it harder. When you struggle to manifest your talent's potential, the only thing you can see is how much it costs you. And then you compare yourself to others on social media, and you wonder how it comes that their talents flow so effortlessly. Truth is, you don't know. People share only their results, seldom the costs behind those results.
Second, you need to have faith in your talent because all those costs will make sense only in the end. As Nietzsche once wrote, "With regard to everything that is perfect we are accustomed to omit the question as to how perfection has been acquired, and we only rejoice in the present as if it had sprung out of the ground by magic."