It's not just the motivation, it's consistency. Putting in mad hours, practicing. I have ingrained abilities that I'll never lose, but the first talent I ever acquired was the piano. I was having severe communication problems and clear learning difficulties, so my mother bought me a little Casio keyboard to help me. I knew the entire thing inside out before long. By 8 years old, I had taught myself music theory and was already composing songs. Then I got sloppy and arrogant.
I felt I was good enough on piano to never practice. I picked up other music related skills - rapping, making beats - and I started to neglect the trade that brought me to be able to do those things in the first place. I still had the skills, but I never progressed. I lost all the things I learned because I never practiced. I would do shows and never rehearse - then go on stage and make it up as I went along. It would often work out and people would gush over my genius, but they didn't realise I was dialing it in the whole time.
After a while, it came to a head and when I lost the verve I had on the keys, I lost everything else. I couldn't make beats, I didn't even want to rap anymore. Everything came to a complete standstill. And I'm now of the belief, that it was because I neglected the main gateway talent I had in the first place, which was as a pianist and a composer. Fortunately it's not been too late for me, and I've had to start back from the bottom, from when I was 8 years old. The rapping and beatmaking will come back too, soon enough, and hopefully other stuff aswell.
In life, the one thing you should never do is neglect the gifts that you have, or believe yourself to have none. We all have our gifts, and it's our job to at least use them. I've been guilty of either not using my gifts or not supplementing them appropriately. Fortunately I'm still somewhat young enough to take advantage of them, and I assume most people reading this are relatively young too. It's not too late - find out what you can do, what your purpose CAN be, and put in the hours. It's like weight-lifting. Eventually, you'll get jacked!
and moving back into the hood with his mother.
