Being gifted is being in the top 2% of intelligence, but that doesn't really say much. It might be closer to the average of knowledge professions like engineering and medicine, but doesn't really get into the realm where people can be truly creative and come up with new insights beyond the systems which already exist.
What I'm realizing is that we raise gifted kids with this expectation that they can do whatever they put their mind to. However, in order to do something really interesting or of note (and being the millionth Amazon engineer isn't that), you need smarts way beyond just the top 2%.
It is probably something closer to AT LEAST the top 0.01% in the relevant aspect of intelligence plus near ideal conditions growing up which allow you to take advantage of childhood neuroplasticity and get a head start. In addition to that, there is a "special something" which is also having a different, rather singular way of approaching things. The rarity of all these conditions put together makes the probability one in 100,000 or less. Basically, the other 99,999 stand no chance. This includes 1999 out of 2000 "gifted children".
This often ends up harming those children. They grow up to think they're special and can do anything they put their mind to, and realize that even difficult undergraduate math or philosophy or whatever is beyond their cognitive capacities even with concerted effort, never mind the frontiers of human knowledge which they will never ever be able to touch.
Based on IQ and levels of giftedness, I hope we can agree that the truth of the above statement follows as a statistical inevitability. That said --
How should one deal with the realization that they are simply not "good enough" to reach a certain goal? I think this is especially significant for gifted folk because due to their overexcitabilities, they often end up devoting large swathes of time to their areas of interest, only to fail in them if they don't have the required level of talent. What must one do when hard work is not enough? This is incredibly hard for gifted people to wrap their heads around: when everything in life has come easy to them, it's hard enough to accept that one must work hard. But what about the point when they realize that they simply lack the talent (or worse, opportunity) and can never get "there" in their finite existence?
I haven't seen much discussion of this on the forum -- maybe I couldn't think of the right search parameters. But how do we counsel overexcitable, idealistic gifted kids/teens/adults when they reach that point? I have seen so many gifted children, now in the professions making a comfortable living and thus "successful", disgruntled at how pedestrian their job is.
I will admit to having a bit of a self-serving agenda here because there are many things which I would like to do which are likely simply impossible for me to do because either a) lack of talent, or b) parents didn't provide avenues to pursue them when young and so the window of opportunity is now closed. I think it was also spurred on when I realized the reality of levels of giftedness. Recently I was talking to this undergraduate who taught himself calculus at 14, and realized that I was considerably more talented at math than him -- and made me realize that professional mathematicians were all at least similarly talented if not more. By ordinary measures, that child would be considered very talented, even an outlier in an ordinary school, but that is not enough to be a professional mathematician. Many mathematicians have achieved International Math Olympiad medals at that age, for a ballpark comparison. It's similar for many other "elite" professions.
