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Asking myself: what talents did God endow me with?

Alexei Sorokin
5 min readApr 10, 2024

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Last night, I was watching Jimmy Fallon perform ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart”

and I felt jealous — not in a malevolent way, but in a sentimental one. I like Jimmy Fallon. How do people like him manage to discover their talent and make a career out of it? Well, for one thing, they discover it early — at least it seems so from their bios. Of course, it takes time and going through failures to become successful, but already in their teen years, they sense their calling. I read Bono’s book. He didn’t overnight discover he was destined to be a singer, but he found his calling pretty early on.

Find a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life, said Mark Twain.

Some people do that — find what they love. They are so fortunate. It’s like winning a lottery.

And then there’s me. Nice brands on the resume, and then decades of struggles. I didn’t expect to struggle. I was a high achiever in my youth, and the achievements weren’t accidental — I worked hard. But then I lost myself, not in some dramatic way, but by traveling down too many paths that didn’t lead to any meaningful destination.

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Alexei Sorokin
Alexei Sorokin

Written by Alexei Sorokin

A Russian immigrant in America, father of 4, Cambridge and Harvard Business School alum. I run and write every day. https://runningwritingliving.substack.com/

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