Becoming Who You Are: Why Don’t Most People Reach Their Potential?

Becoming Who You Are: Why Don’t Most People Reach Their Potential?

There are two states of being: surviving and thriving. For evolution to work, surviving isn’t enough; we also have to thrive so we can provide and nurture offspring. We have an innate need to satisfy the requirements of survival, yes, but we also have a deeper desire to make something of ourselves beyond that so we can thrive in the world. And the latter is what makes us feel like we are living up to our potential, to our true selves.

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be."

Due to the sheer complexity of the average modern environment, one that is so different from what we initially evolved for, our lives have increasingly moved from managing ourselves in the physical realm of the body, moderating its survival, to the emotional realm of consciousness, moderating its sanity. Our media devices fill us with more information than we could hope to absorb and comprehend in multiple lifetimes; some of it purely false and even more of it simply useless.

In order to reach our potential and thrive, we must find a way to differentiate and integrate ourselves into this complex world. Differentiation is the process of discovering individual values, while integration is the narrative or meaning that drives those values into day-to-day actions. There are many people who are integrated but not differentiated, and their problem is mostly that they haven’t really done the work to expose themselves to the complexities surrounding them. On the other hand, there are people who are differentiated but not integrated. These people have exposed themselves to the different corners of the world, picked out the values that represent their individuality, but they have a hard time making it all cohere.

To reach our potential and thrive, we must take responsibility for our own growth and development. The only person who can constantly look out for us is the person we see in the mirror. One of the great justices of the modern world, however, is the democratization of information (through the internet, libraries, etc.) Abundance is a gift, but only if we learn to harness its potential. All of the answers are already out there and immediately available, waiting for someone to take the initiative to find them and then have the courage to incorporate them into their life.

But how do we actually go about reaching our potential and thriving in this complex world? Here are three actionable pieces of advice to help you on your journey: