What the F*** is My Potential?
TDLR: I reconnect with a lifelong friend of mine, Nathan Green, a recent graduate of the University of California, Irvine with a degree in Philosophy specializing in Law and Society, and a Minor in Global Sustainability. Ranging from topics covering conservation in our hometown, to living a meaningful and successful life, we explore what it means to love life and be passionate about the lives we lead. Delving into the psychology a little, we discuss the double edged sword of chasing success, or not chasing it at all, and acknowledging all the factors that come with it. While between subjects we briefly shine on our own lives, talking about the dichotomy of sport psychology and a man who loves lint above everything.
I’m going to show you why you fail to live up to your potential. It’s really simple. Before we get to that however, we need to touch base. How’s everything going with you? In my last post, we talked about fear and anxiety, getting to the root of those anxieties and ultimately finding a way to conquer them. Which is all good and well, but that isn’t the only issue that stands in the way of your goals. We are all wired the wrong way around from the beginning when it comes to analyzing the correct course to our goals. How do you change that though? Let’s jump into an breakdown of a quote from Psychology Today’s Dr. Ian Robertson, in his article talking about “The Winner Effect”.
“The brain has a common ‘reward network’, whose dopamine-linked activity underpins all these great feelings we have when we enjoy delicious food, win a bet, get a pay rise, have sex — or succeed. Drugs like cocaine can hijack this network so that they can make such natural, normal rewards of life seem pale and lifeless — that is the curse of addiction. — -[Success’] psychological effects are powerful — it gives our self-confidence and feeling of control over the world an ego-enhancing boost.”
(‘We Built It’: The Neuroscience of Success, Dr. Robertson)
Much like cocaine, success can wreak havoc in your brain. If you succeed for an extended period of time, any lack of success, regardless of how extreme, will seem monstrous. It’s an addiction. Success neurologically releases dopamine in your brain, and when we are exposed habitually at a young age, like many of us are, we then spend our lives chasing it. To speak from personal experience, growing up a committed athlete, I saw a lot of this within my peers, and most importantly myself. When we don’t succeed however, our brains go into crash prevention and we spin out of control. We become upset, irritable, depressed, and no one wants to be around us. When others see this sort of reaction, their immediate thought is usually, “wow that person is so passionate about ______”, and not “That person needs help”. This is partly because we as a society don’t recognize success the same way we do other neuro-chemical dependencies such as narcotics, alcohol, sex, gambling, etc.
In today’s age it’s almost impossible to live in the United States without being constantly exposed to this damaging mentality. We hear it in the heart of our music now; “the grind never stops,” “get rich or die trying,” “everyday I’m hustling,” “I don’t speak broke”, and so many other modern colloquialisms. Many of us have grown up listening to our parent’s say, “You should be getting A’s in your classes/you are smarter than that”, or “You weren’t playing as well as you should have today, we’ll run extra drills this weekend to fix that for next week”. I even remember when I was learning how to type in school, the program we were using forced you to reach a certain word per minute before you could progress. This wasn’t terrible, but in combination with the delete key being disabled, you had to type every sentence perfectly and within the WPM requirement, putting undue stress on the student. This idea, that we must be the best at all times so we can be even better tomorrow, can fuel the ego when it works, and push people to do extraordinary things, but when it doesn’t work it can destroy us. We cannot be our best 24/7, it’s just not possible, it’s perfectionism at its worst. Within The Fumblers Bag Podcast, Nathan recounts his own personal experience, watching me grow up dealing with this idea. At one point (21:50) he comments:
“You get into it, and you have to be the best at it, and that’s okay, that’s fine, you just get really passionate and that’s great. But you also get hit by that too, cause I can tell when you are not at peak performance you get really upset with yourself, and you’re hard on yourself. I’ve watched that.”
Within the frame of the podcast, he’s speaking about my almost undying competitive drive when it comes to video games, but in a much larger sense this dominated my life completely for 20 years. It wasn’t until this past year that I was forced to reevaluate my own sense of accomplishment and how I viewed my own success. At its root, this overly competitive drive and “passion” boiled down to perfectionism for me. I think a lot of people struggle with perfectionism in today’s world. Everyone is trying to have their cake, and eat it too. From that constant drive to improve and stack success, we tend to divert our mental effort into criticism of ourselves and what we can improve upon. We snip and prune ourselves to be the best, and look the best, something that is exacerbated by social media. I’m not alone in this thought. Dr. Ilene Strauss Cohen talks about perfectionism in her article “How to Let Go of the Need to Be Perfect”:
“Feeling and thinking this way makes perfect sense, because our culture puts a ton of pressure on us to be perfect. We’re made to feel as if there’s something wrong with us if we’re still single by a certain age, don’t make a certain amount of money, don’t have a big social media following, or don’t look a certain way. In the midst of all that pressure, it’s easy to forget all the great, unique things about ourselves.”
(“How to Let Go of the Need to Be Perfect”, Dr. Strauss Cohen)
How do we go from trying to burn ourselves out in a blaze of accomplishments and social currency, to feeling happy and whole? Remember when I said I was going to show you how to live up to your potential? Yeah, that was a bit of a fake out. The question isn’t about living up to your current projection of success or potential, but rather reframing what success is. In fact, the whole beginning of this process starts with rewiring what your brain deems as appropriate for dopamine release. Dr. Strauss Cohen states:
“Our mindset contains our ideas and views about life, which come from our previous experiences and perceptions of the world. How we look at the world influences our experience in it. Our perception becomes our reality. Creating a good-enough mindset that isn’t filled with unrealistic expectations will help you cultivate a sense of wellbeing.”
(“How to Let Go of the Need to Be Perfect”, Dr. Strauss Cohen)
It isn’t an easy process. But working through step by step, and not being afraid to get into the nitty gritty of your own psychology, will help massively. If you want to change what you deem as your true potential, and not feel like you are compromising for comfortability, you have to be willing to alter your perception of reality. Dr. Strauss Cohen believes there are a few key ways to go about this, and these don’t come in any particular order. The first way is to let go of what is holding you back. There may be things in your life that have hurt you, but we have to realize we are more than our pain. Usually negativity and self deprecating thought can prevent us from growing out of the limits of pain, because even though it hurts us, after a while it is normal. We are comfortable with consistency, even if it’s not positive, don’t be afraid of change. Next you have to be able to make your own decisions. Constantly seeking out advice from others is just another form of anxiety, we want the weight of our decisions to feel less impactful, and sometimes it’s easier when someone else makes the call for you. Even if you are the one to pull that trigger, it feels easier when someone else tells you to do it.
This leads into the next point, self reliance. You’ll never gain self reliance or confidence if you don’t take responsibility for your actions, that means success and failure. Be okay with both happening, life is a process of trial and error, when you can rely on yourself, you won’t doubt yourself. That’s not to say shut everyone out of your life so you can make decisions, cause that is just wrong, DON’T DO THAT. It just means when decision time comes, be comforted by the fact that you can make that choice, and no one needs to tell you how to live. In another point Dr. Strauss comments that, “you can’t hate your way into accepting yourself” (“How to Let Go of the Need to Be Perfect”, Dr. Strauss Cohen). It just takes practice and you have to preach self positivity till it sticks. It’s infuriating sometimes, I know, and it can sound preachy, but you can’t be positive if you don’t believe it. The final point, which I believe to be one of the most important lessons anyone can learn is to be satisfied with where you are. Dr. Straus Cohen solidifies:
“We can’t feel totally satisfied with where we’re going until we can accept, acknowledge, and appreciate where we are. Make peace with where you are, and your journey toward something new will feel much more peaceful, rewarding, and satisfying.”
(“How to Let Go of the Need to Be Perfect”, Dr. Strauss Cohen)
This is something that I personally struggle with greatly, being present. Acknowledging that we live in the present, and being appreciative of where we are and how far we have gone to get here. Life is a lot like climbing a never ending mountain; At times we reach ledges where we can look out and experience the beauty of it all, but these are all too short, and we get too focused on just climbing to the top. We are never going to reach the top, but that doesn’t mean we can’t turn around whenever we like, and enjoy the view. Changing your view of your potential is like shifting where you want to be on the mountain. Most of us aim for the top and endlessly toil away forgetting that we are in a beautiful place surrounded by those we love and cherish. However, if we are to feel whole and satisfied within this lifetime, we have to stop aiming for the top, and celebrate every step we make, every fall we take, and every breathtaking view we encounter. We have to learn to live in the moment, and once we do, we can start to think about our goals again, but instead of looking upward, we look inward.
Work Cited:
Keating, Christopher. The Fumbler’s Bag Podcast, Episode 1. YouTube, YouTube, 10 July 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_-wUsV1Bls.
Robertson, Ian H. “‘We Built It’: The Neuroscience of Success.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 1 Sept. 2012, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-winner-effect/201209/we-built-it-the-neuroscience-success.
Strauss Cohen, Ilene. “How to Let Go of the Need to Be Perfect.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 12 Jan. 2018, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-emotional-meter/201801/how-let-go-the-need-be-perfect.
