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\n\t\tOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.\t<\/p>\n
What in the world is potential anyway?<\/p>\n
We say this word all the time. You have so much potential. You\u2019re not living up to your potential. Imagine if you actually reached your full potential. Hearing people say that to me used to give me anxiety. It comes loaded with expectations. <\/p>\n
Full potential. What does that even mean?<\/p>\n
Potential, by definition, is basically the capacity to become something in the future. Something. It doesn\u2019t say successful, wealthy, CEO, bestselling author, eight-figure entrepreneur or one of those people who wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to meditate, journal, work out and apparently solve half the world\u2019s problems before I\u2019ve had coffee.<\/p>\n
It just means the capacity to become.<\/p>\n
The more I think about this, the more I wonder if we\u2019ve gotten the whole idea backward. We talk about potential like it\u2019s a destination. Like there is this fully evolved, wildly successful version of us somewhere out there, and our job is to hurry up and become them or else.<\/p>\n
Or else what? We wasted our life, and now we should live in regret? Sounds fun. <\/p>\n
Especially if you\u2019re an entrepreneur, because we are REALLY good at finding ways to measure ourselves. Revenue, growth, funding, clients, followers, team size, impact. Hit one number and another magically appears. Congratulations, you made it. Here\u2019s your new goal. Oh wait, here\u2019s another.<\/p>\n
I work with a lot of high achievers, and I see this all the time. At some point, potential stops being exciting and starts becoming another way to measure ourselves. Am I doing enough? Should my business be bigger by now? Should I be further along?<\/p>\n
Further along than what? Or who?<\/p>\n
Sometimes it\u2019s our parents, peers or industry. Sometimes it\u2019s that person on LinkedIn who apparently grew their company 600%, traveled the world, spent quality time with their family and gets eight hours of sleep every night. I assume they also drink a gallon of water a day.<\/p>\n
But a lot of the time nobody else is even doing it to us. We create the standard ourselves, alongside our good friend \u201cshould.\u201d<\/p>\n
I should<\/em> be making more by now. I should<\/em> have figured this out. I should<\/em> be able to handle more.<\/p>\n That\u2019s where \u201cliving up to your potential\u201d can actually become a problem. The minute we decide what our potential is supposed to look like, haven\u2019t we also put a ceiling on it?<\/p>\n And how in the world would we know what that ceiling is?<\/p>\n Think about who you were when you first started your business. That person didn\u2019t know what you know now. You hadn\u2019t screwed up the things you\u2019ve screwed up yet. You hadn\u2019t met the people you\u2019ve met or made the hard decisions you\u2019ve made. <\/p>\n You became more capable.<\/p>\n There are probably things you handle today without thinking twice that would have completely overwhelmed you five or 10 years ago. So why do we assume this version of us somehow knows what the future version will be capable of? We\u2019re trying to predict the capacity of someone who doesn\u2019t exist yet. <\/p>\n Our brains naturally use previous experience to predict what comes next. But entrepreneurship asks us to imagine and build things we may have very little evidence for yet. Our brains like precedent. Entrepreneurship requires possibility.<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t done this\u201d is not the same thing as \u201cI can\u2019t become someone who can.\u201d<\/p>\n And no, I\u2019m not saying we\u2019re literally limitless. We have limits. I\u2019m 5\u20197\u2033, 40 years old and haven\u2019t played competitive basketball in decades. I feel pretty comfortable taking the WNBA off my vision board.<\/p>\n But I think we\u2019re pretty bad at knowing which of today\u2019s limitations will still be limitations five or 10 years from now.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s another side of potential we don\u2019t talk about nearly as much. Just because I can become capable of something doesn\u2019t necessarily mean I should.<\/p>\n There\u2019s an ancient Chinese story about a farmer whose horse runs away. Everyone tells him what terrible luck this is. His response is basically, \u201cMaybe.\u201d The horse returns with more horses. Great luck. Maybe. His son gets injured riding one. Terrible luck. Maybe. Then soldiers come to take the young men away to war, but because his son is injured, he isn\u2019t taken.<\/p>\n Good luck? Bad luck? Maybe.<\/p>\n We do the exact opposite in business. We label everything immediately. Funding is good. Losing a client is bad. Revenue doubled? Good. Deal fell apart? Bad.<\/p>\n But maybe. We don\u2019t know the whole story yet.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve seen this play out in my own life more times than I can count. Some of the things that felt like the worst or scariest seasons, things I absolutely would not have chosen, ended up creating a path toward more freedom or peace.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve watched it happen with clients too. One client was making more money than he ever had. On paper, he was doing incredibly well. Except he wasn\u2019t sleeping. His health was taking a hit, and the environment had become toxic. Leaving felt almost impossible because of how much money he was making. At one point I finally asked him, \u201cAt what point will this have cost you enough?\u201d<\/p>\n He had already been through a devastating accident years earlier and worked incredibly hard to rebuild financially. He was 62. Starting over wasn\u2019t inspiring. It was terrifying. <\/p>\n Then he didn\u2019t have to make the decision. The company made it for him. His boss, who he considered a friend, gave him two months\u2019 severance and let him go.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m 62 years old, and I\u2019m starting over.\u201d He thought his world was crumbling. And honestly, it sucked. This wasn\u2019t some cute \u201cone door closes, another opens\u201d moment.<\/p>\n But I could also see what staying was costing him. I told him continuing in that job may eventually have cost him his life. What felt like this enormous loss might actually be his ticket to design the rest of it.<\/p>\n That sounds nice now. It did not feel nice then. Eventually he started asking a different question. Not just, \u201cHow do I replace this job?\u201d but \u201cWhat do I actually want the next part of my life to look like?\u201d<\/p>\n About three months later, he landed a deal with people he genuinely respected, making essentially the same amount with the potential to make more. Good luck? Bad luck? Maybe.<\/p>\n I\u2019m careful with stories like this because I don\u2019t believe every terrible thing is secretly wonderful. Sometimes loss is just loss. But I do think we often judge a chapter before we know the rest of the story.<\/p>\n And we do the same thing with success. We assume more is better. If I can build the $50 million company, shouldn\u2019t I? If I can make more, grow more, carry more, shouldn\u2019t I? Maybe.<\/p>\n Because every expansion comes with a cost. More responsibility. More complexity. More decisions. Sometimes more freedom. Sometimes a whole lot less of it. High achievers tend to assume that if we CAN carry something, we SHOULD carry it. And people will happily let us. Funny how that works.<\/p>\n At some point, \u201cLook how much I can handle\u201d is not necessarily a flex. Sometimes becoming more capable means becoming capable of putting something down. Delegating. Saying no to money. Admitting you were wrong. Letting somebody else have the better idea. Building a company that doesn\u2019t need you in the middle of every single thing.<\/p>\n Maybe it\u2019s realizing that just because you CAN build something bigger doesn\u2019t mean you actually want to. That isn\u2019t wasted potential.<\/p>\n So maybe there are two better questions than \u201cAm I living up to my potential?\u201d<\/p>\n The first keeps us from deciding too early what our limits are. The second keeps us from turning \u201cpotential\u201d into yet another exhausting high-achiever treadmill.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what I\u2019ll be capable of 10 years from now. I haven\u2019t lived those years yet. I haven\u2019t met everyone I\u2019m going to meet. I haven\u2019t learned everything I\u2019m going to learn. I hopefully haven\u2019t had my best idea yet. I also haven\u2019t made all my mistakes yet, which is unfortunate but almost certainly true.<\/p>\n Maybe the goal isn\u2019t to become capable of everything. Maybe it\u2019s to keep expanding what\u2019s possible without assuming we have to choose every possibility available to us.<\/p>\n You can become capable of building a bigger company and choose not to. You can become capable of carrying more and decide to carry less. You can become capable of doing something extraordinary and decide the ordinary parts of your life matter more.<\/p>\n None of that is wasted potential. Maybe potential was never something we were supposed to reach in the first place. Maybe it keeps changing because we keep changing.<\/p>\n That\u2019s one of the weird things about entrepreneurship. You start out thinking you\u2019re building a business and somewhere along the way realize the business has been changing you too. Sometimes in great ways. Sometimes in ways that require a therapist. Occupational hazard.<\/p>\n So I\u2019m not all that interested anymore in whether I\u2019m living up to my potential. I\u2019m more interested in what I\u2019m becoming capable of and whether the life that comes with it is actually a life I want.<\/p>\n Where does that lead? I don\u2019t know yet. <\/p>\n Maybe.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nYou don\u2019t know what future you can handle<\/h2>\n
Just because you can doesn\u2019t mean you should<\/h2>\n
What to ask yourself instead<\/h2>\n
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